Wait For Me Poem by Sachin Ketkar

Like dried teak leaves
My eyes have come off

Bored crows people
The forsaken branches
Of my leafless fingers

The sun has dropped
His smooth round skull somewhere
On my treeless grounds

I am waiting to grow
into a great babul tree
In this wasteland
Where no sun grows on the trees

Blown by the barrenness of the winds
My eyes gather near your feet

Crows look at you
As if you are unwanted stranger.

Somewhere a monkey stares at you
And you do not know.

In the crowded thorny shrubs in my lungs
Hangs a no-moon night
For
In the shifting sands of life
I have buried all my twelve moons.

My thousand eyes
Dry like leaves gathered around your feet
Blaze like the intestines of a deadpan earth

The bored crows
Fly away into the soul
Of white inert sky.

The smooth round skull
Of the sun crumbles into dust
I am waiting to die

Like this huge leafless baobab
On which the monkeys wait
For the fruit and a leaf

Dust gathers on the tired tamarind tree
That has forgotten its own taste.

Dust gathers
On the brown soil of my eyes
Dust gathers
On the round abandoned skulls of the sun.

Monkeys look emptily at the shadows
Of the crows which are no longer there.

Gather the ashes of my eyes in your palms.
Weep the tears blue as the earth
On the silence of my pyre

Remember me as monkeys
Remember the fruits
When they are hungry
As the crows remember their mates
In summer. Remember me
As the leafless baobab
Flourishing on the tombs
Of the entombed moon
Remember the rich green felicity of their leaves.
Wait for me
Where no one waits for anyone any longer