Life and Death: Eternal
Twins
M.G.N. Murthy
Longing for silence and solitude,
I trudged along bristly corn fields
Towards the far-off countryside
To find a serene haven for my restless mind.
Startled by a voice, sudden and strange,
My ageing limbs faltered for a while;
Awe-Struck I stood, like one spell-bound.
“Don’t you know me?” asked the voice,
slow and clear;
Sounding alien, yet close and familiar.
wondering who it was that spoke,
I looked around in vain
For none was beside me there
In all that land, desolate and bare.
“Don’t you know me?!” cried the voice again,
Clearer and nearer than before.
Amazed I listed, as if in a trance,
Staring at my spectral shadow
That seem to speak my mind,
mysterious, yet an echo of my soul!
“Many a time in fear,
you have turned your face away from the mine
Your companion through life,
Always at your heels;
As moment die and merge with time,
I revive ever and renew life.
Death, thy twin, Life’s shadow,
Inseparable, together we go,
Clinging like chariot wheel.
Never have you dared to face
And know my nature true.
Fear, veil of ignorance, blurred my image
And made you gaze at my shadow
Distorted in dreams and visions, weird and wild.
Awake and see; I am not what I seem to be.
when life is past its prime
And is bereft of verve and vim,
I come at the end, a true friend,
To touch you with my magic wand.
Transformed you arise
with life long aglow and vision new
while I fallow you again
in cycles eternal, co-existent with time!”