Where There Is Always A Passing Train To Look On Poem by Madathil Rajendran Nair

A daily ritual
In the late afternoon of life
My sheepish black dog accompanies me
To the rail station

There we sit looking
At the distant horizon
Which philosophically shrinks
And dissolves in to oblivion

Where a streak of a silver cloud
Harbinger of heavy showers to come
Raises its head and wanes -
A hopeless attempt at life

Then there is the rushing roar
From the west
The four thirty express darts
Before our staring eyes
On to a distant city
The name of which is not remembered
Out there among the hives
Which thronging human bees
Call by this or that name

Chennai, Mumbai or whatever
Me and my dog look on
At the fast turning wheels
Immersed like kids in a nursery rhyme
Which sings of wheels
Immortalizes buses and trains

The rushing noise is over
In less than a minute
Before our blinking eyes
Sitting on the lonely bench
Of a roofless platform
A rail station of desolation
The train has already gone

When we depart slowly
To a shaded place
We call our home
A mile along an undone dusty road
Where I sit brooding in a couch
My blackie beside
Looking through the window
At a dying dusk

Outside on a twig
A fidgety black bird
Name unknown chirps
At measured intervals

What did we speak to one another
The bird, me and my dog
No one knows
Yet, profound was the moment
Before night dawns
Carries us into oblivion
Till there is another morn
For us to look on
To await the train
And chirp on

Life near a desolate station
Where there is always a passing train to look on