A Dreaming Rock – Sasidharan Cheruvattath, Kerala

Sasidharan Cheruvattath

A midnight dream
of a post meridian sun
upon a redundant shore,
of lurking iconoclasts,
behind introspective rocks
ruminating to set free
the incarcerated icons,
waiting for the idolaters.

Voiceless,
in the bottomless lifelessness
battered by traumatic waves
of the asphyxiated truth
a silent survival’s self persecution,
reminisced,
its freedom in an earlier birth
as an innocent infant,
smiling and sobbing,
heard in its deep-rooted womb.

It walking the sands,
chasing, racing crabs
that scripted on the smooth, wet sand
trailing the skirting sea,
expectant with tear-laden clouds;

Now the shores are abandoned
even by sauntering ghosts.

Shedding skins of time
like hidden molting snakes,
the rock’s craving for love
pealed off, it remained
stuck in its last thought
wedged tightly in its molecules.