Sea of Change

I'd met you, like a lad meeting his neighbor little lass, Charmed to you at very first sight, I stood like a dumb ass; As tabooed lover admiring his darling, I stood far, Thirst of bathing in your love, yet, blazed in me like tar jar... I looked like a hippy cowboy in my rustic boyhood, You're a celibate Tamil lady in blue maidenhood; Your charmed me; I was like iron-dust attracted by magnet, I'd fallen in your beauty as a fish in a dragnet... I stood in bewilderment as you grew in great beauty, I sensed being your devotee is my august duty; Your treasures I ignored preferring your simplicity, Pearl and ruby seemed nothing before your complexity... This adoration got doubled, like seasons in full bloom, The times I'd failed to visit you, had been my greatest gloom; Your wonders, like star-dusts, in huge microscopes I did zoom, Your water-beauty resembled Arabian perfume... It's then, like volcano, the caste-creed concept erupted, Folks near you from folks from far got mutually abducted; Folks, once, stood bound in garlands of fragrant fraternity, Found each one engulfed by enmity of eternity... Religion, like daggers in tragic plays, reasons did raze, Violence started writing on humans bloody red rays; Massive stones and boulders, thundered, splitting shoulders and chest, Dragging them in nets, like rough sharks, some drowned them with full zest... You turned a meeting-place for transmitters of violence, Great market wherein one could buy and sell ethnic vengeance; Hallmark of your beauty, lily-like purest innocence, Had hidden its head under dark hideous insolence... Thenceforth, your sapphire blue got turned into coral blood red, It's not menses-cycle of change; you seemed seeking blood-shed; Like Scylla, and Charybdis, you stood swallowing the dead, To the guiltless folks around, you proved to be a death-bed... My love of meeting you often, then, like sunset got shred; As a beast least bothered in love, I, thenceforth, went ahead; You beat loudly all through day and night as though calling me, Will first love, failed and faded, yet, easily gain its glee...? (On a sea near my hometown, I fondly visited during my boyhood, changing into a center of cast-creed violence) 15 December 2021