Wounds Heal – Praneel Dev

The following poem is written in Terza Rima, a style pioneered and popularized by Dante Alighieri, the popular Italian renaissance poet. The style is characterized by interlinking of stanzas, symbolising one continuous tale that starts and ends at the same time. It can be considered a euphemism for a circle having no beginning or an ending, just the path along which it is set. A special rhyme scheme is followed throughout the piece: aba, bcb, cdc and so on.

 

The crescent lamp wanders off

The red christens the sky

The weary man punctuates his yawn with a cough.

 

The solace of sleep wears dry

He brushes, bathes and breaks his fast

A smile curves his mouth, his spirits high.

 

He dresses his best, his coat on last

Looks forward to the present, a gift this date

Vainly unaware of the curses cast.

 

In youthful spring, his pupils dilate 

And the sunlight trickles down his cheek

He leaps forward with an elvish gait.

 

He spots her across the paved creek

And like two swans in the lake under dusk-lit blue

They dance towards each other, only eyes speak.

 

A breath of a feather away she is due

The infinity between them in reach

Awaiting embrace of the arms he threw.

 

But alas, mistress life cackled a screech

And a yellow-eyed demon whisks her away

It rips his heart and hangs it on a beech.

 

The yarns of fate weave today

A tapestry of pain in dark red crimson

The man is broken and he knows no way.

 

No way not to sway and faint

And break into shards of delirious haze

The nightmare of today is a dream so quaint.

 

This second of tragedy fuels the pain of days

His pearls birth rivers down his chin

The shining soul has now lost its glaze.

– Praneel Dev, Amity International School, Noida

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