You strode along the shores of modernity

Like Mallarme to disengage

Word-clogged reality by

Crafting silences,

Flickering between ennui and angst.

Buds twitched, petals drooped

Tears dry to a trickle

Values melting away on the pyre

As man’s ravenous eyes feed on,

Folded away in a corner

Lies the aching soul

The cast-away morsels of humanity

Caught in the cobweb of rebirth

Brooding over the heyday of Satya Yuga

“He is a victim of self-delusion”

Sarcasm is frozen in stupor.

As you glean impressions

Memories sail in endless flocks

A dragging, drugged silence

Veils your words…

 NOTE: Nirmal Verma (3 April 1929 – 25 October 2005) was a  Hindi writer & one of the pioneers of ‘Nayi Kahani’ (New Story), the literary movement of Hindi literature.