Soliloquy

(In the memory of Irrfan Khan)

If rain it must on your snowy peaks
when the wind stopped howling into the gale
and turned the golden precipices into white,
you remained unmoved, untouched by
the fanfare that had enveloped us lesser mortals

who only had a tiny idea about what you
were trying to say, of what you were seeking
to achieve in a world that had fed mediocrity
deep into the cavity of our stomachs. We didn’t
understand why you chose to stand apart.

The hardest part was acting against the laws
of self-preservation, almost as if you
enjoyed denying yourself the tiny pleasures
of life that lesser men like us wouldn’t
have waited for a minute to succumb to.

We woke up to your greatest deeds
celebrating their ubiquity with unflinching pride,
questioning how you’d been left unwounded by ego.
Other men below you had suffered,
many had failed; all had believed.

If rain it must on your shaded hills
piercing and dissecting every decision
that you had taken; merging the good with
the bad, often forgetting the ‘why’ behind them,
you blinked, while I caught my breath

from having run all the way to catch up
with the inheritance you left behind,
forgetting to look at your face
which seemed crushed under the weight
of the stories you would not live to tell.

If rain it must on your faithless seas,
maybe I will come swimming
along its coast someday, wet to the bone
trying to cognise your eccentricities;
will you embrace me in your arms or let me sink?

The last leaf from the withered tree
in your courtyard, pushing and prodding
itself to act against gravity, seems slow to
embrace the sadness in the air as
it gently begins to make its way to the ground.