Over the drumming traffic, in the in-between spaces of cloistered colonnades, hands are brought together, palms to the sky - a sanctuary for butterflies. Feather wings gently stroke burning hearts, fanning the embers. Destiny, solitude and crowds. I want to see India someday.
Brown-black eyes and black-brown skin watch white shirts and tan trousers from shadowed coolness. Blinding sunlight filters down to the hot platform through the roof and vents. The trains are running again. Crowds gather, overwhelming the machine. Hundreds. Thousands. Space is made, baggage forgotten. Happy tunes and unsmiling faces – they are location dependent. Whistles sound, and movement resumes. Remorseless diesels push polished steel forward in distance and time, metallic snakes driven across the land. Infinitely small as they race away from the onrushing noise, the gleaming steel is a note from Europe in a foreign land.
The golden river sheds its banks. Aimless and methodical, it plays through the fields and forests. The olive dye of tranquility is drowned in the slow press of the river. Detritus of growth and progress are floated, displaced, waterlog, submerge, are revealed. Slowly petrifying as it goes, the movement of the river marks time without the language of man. Ganges, Indus, life, mother - the river slowly wears at the land, the land tumbles and falls to the river. Water is the record keeper of the land, and land the warden of the prodigal river. Maa Ganga. An inverted sky stares up from the silken surface. Harnessed to the stars, the river looks back under the watchful gaze of the sister as it slips toward fate.
Gleaming serpents slide below the surface. Breeching periodically, the contour of the land is drawn from below. The flatness of the water is deceiving. The river is always in change, but eternal in form. It plays along the polished perfection of the tracks, changing everything and nothing – the rails will be here for a very long time - the river, longer still. Where steel meets water, debris gathers. Drawn by magnet, molecule or fate – who knows? believers are hard to convince in any event. The train grinds to a halt, confronted by the river. Gravity’s game – the winner already decided.
Brown-black eyes and black-brown skin watch white shirts and tan trousers from shadowed coolness. Blinding sunlight filters down to the hot platform through the roof and vents. The trains are running again. Crowds gather, overwhelming the machine. Hundreds. Thousands. Space is made, baggage forgotten. Happy tunes and unsmiling faces – they are location dependent. Whistles sound, and movement resumes. Remorseless diesels push polished steel forward in distance and time, metallic snakes driven across the land. Infinitely small as they race away from the onrushing noise, the gleaming steel is a note from Europe in a foreign land.
The golden river sheds its banks. Aimless and methodical, it plays through the fields and forests. The olive dye of tranquility is drowned in the slow press of the river. Detritus of growth and progress are floated, displaced, waterlog, submerge, are revealed. Slowly petrifying as it goes, the movement of the river marks time without the language of man. Ganges, Indus, life, mother - the river slowly wears at the land, the land tumbles and falls to the river. Water is the record keeper of the land, and land the warden of the prodigal river. Maa Ganga. An inverted sky stares up from the silken surface. Harnessed to the stars, the river looks back under the watchful gaze of the sister as it slips toward fate.
Gleaming serpents slide below the surface. Breeching periodically, the contour of the land is drawn from below. The flatness of the water is deceiving. The river is always in change, but eternal in form. It plays along the polished perfection of the tracks, changing everything and nothing – the rails will be here for a very long time - the river, longer still. Where steel meets water, debris gathers. Drawn by magnet, molecule or fate – who knows? believers are hard to convince in any event. The train grinds to a halt, confronted by the river. Gravity’s game – the winner already decided.
to be continued
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