The Roads Much Travelled, a Matter for the Soul
…every road we walk becomes a prayer…
Today it’ll have to be for the broken road.
The crying, I mean.
The road which is a tortured prayer
that carries tumbled
detritus of intentions and curses,
strangled dreams and those which
come to fruition.
Take me somewhere,
anywhere,
I cried, please road! You carry anguished air
coughed up by the choked mud bath
which my creative waters have become….
Bring me to a region carved from grace,
O broken broken road!
Shattered nether arm,
you functionary of the dispossessed —
so unlike those smooth
shiny limbs that insinuate
themselves around
sleek suburbia of sleek lives —
carry me away.
Grimaces and gashes within
landscapes stare emptily
as demographics rearrange
contours around you.
Suddenly,
sunshine like an exploding marigold
scatters itself on a square of emerald:
A joyful field of rice paddy!
In the distance are speckled meadows
rolling in pollen with blue shadows in between,
and timeless tracings of misty trees.
I feel like that, deep inside —
formless, far off, faded and timeless.
Most of us cry inside.
We think it’s for ourselves:
we cry for what was and is lost or
what might’ve been and is not.
But that’s not true.
We cry for the precariousness and perfection
that is the universe.
It is the wonder-pain-joy-sorrow of
acknowledging the unity of things.
How else embrace death?
The root of the word ‘precarious’ lies in ‘with prayers.’
Every road we walk becomes a prayer…
Why we cry inside is a matter for the soul,
of the search for connectivity.
It becomes music poured from shards of glass
and warm petals chilled at the edges,
and exists beyond
the realm of mere words and thought.
The crying is all the deserts, rain forests,
oceans and mountain ranges that sigh,
sway, heave and rustle within us.
It is invisible stars on a foggy night
and the inaccessible penumbra of a full moon,
still and incandescent,
while the heavens slowly turn around it….
It’s the hand of Michelangelo or Beethoven
or Neruda that midwifes the crying inside.
And when the soul convulses and disgorges hot tears,
it is simply worship,
an affirmation of the work of the Hand that is the ultimate truth.
Farida Haque
