One Day While Burning The Father

One day I had been burning my father By the river, Making him bathe And change the dhoti and the kurta On the river bed Yea, one evening I had been to the hamlet To burn him, One dark evening Changing into the night time With the dead body of his, I mean the lifeless body of his And with a light burning Walking over the banks Up and down And the alleys zigzagged Lining on I under the open skies Tired of all day journey Sleeping by the pyre And marking him Consigned to the flames Feeding upon, The logs a-lit And engulfing The trails of smoke rising, People telling life-histories, Patriarchal and ancestral, Hari bols renting the skies But who is there to hear and reflect Upon in that place, Away from human haunt And thinly populated The cremators were poking into And the blaze trailing And taking on again, Feeding upon To finfish it all, To finish it all And remained it not anything else, But fire, ashes and coals Om shantih shantih shantih