Beautiful, Mad Strumming

 <a story and a memory; an expression, and a way to sort it all out in my head : >

THE MEETING

 It was about three years ago: I had come to Kerala at an odd time (non-summer holiday period) for a cousin's big fat wedding (I happen to have an endless supply of cousins, at least one of whom gets married every other year). The downside of this out-of-the-ordinary visit was that I had to suffer for a week in Kerala's hyper-humid, uber-tropical heat. The perk? I would get to see an aunt of mine, stationed outside Kerala, whom I hardly knew because the vacations of my cousins and mine (and consequently, our hometown visits) didn't coincide. Yes, you may now sigh at the Great Sadness of Modern Times--estranged relatives living at opposite ends of the world. More importantly, I would get to see my cousin (a couple of years older than me) after after an even longer period of estrangement. Cool. The last time I had seen him...okay, I didn't remember. All I had was a vague memory of a chubby, huge guy who spoke in something that was supposed to be Malayalam, but sounded nothing like it. I was expecting to welcome a chubbier, huge-r guy with an "Oh... greetings, long-lost cousin" or whatever. That expectation went to pot when I heard rumours that he had changed--a lot. Well, well, well--this could get interesting.....

    The day when my aunt, cousin and uncle were supposed to arrive found me sneaking around the doorway, casting furtive glances at the main door of the house to catch a glimpse of the much-hyped-about cousin. And there he was--I was speechless. The tall, well-built and unbelievably good-looking guy who ambled in bore no resemblance to the aforementioned vague memory. He carried some kind of misshapen suitcase with him, and looked quite intimidating (being born a short person has induced in me a natural awe for tall people). This did not bode well for ice-breaking of any sort, what with my already being completely weirded out by the fact that a stranger was suddenly elevated to the intimate rank of 'cousin'. And so, my cousin sister--the only one with whom my age gap was less than astronomical-- and I remained aloof; wary of the mysterious suitcase that he lugged about. After the customary (and painfully awkward) introductions, the two of us went off to keep ourselves entertained until lunchtime. Wandering about the family house, chatting and sneaking tiny tastes from the huge sadhya that was being prepared in the kitchen, our attention was suddenly drawn towards the terrace--music! Muffled, wonderful tunes could be heard through the ceiling. Our aunt (the newly-arrived one) laughed and said: "Oh, that's just him showing off before the girls!" And thus the Mystery of the Misshapen Suitcase was solved--it was a guitar case. Another layer of intrigue added to this New Person--what next?? We crept upstairs and carefully peeped at him from behind the huge bedsheets hung out to dry: there he sat, on the old rickety chair that was always lying about, legs propped up on the short terrace wall, fingers magically dancing across a shiny guitar. And it was wondrous how the tunes were just like the ones we heard on television. This broody, handsome person belting out tunes on his guitar was our cousin--we just couldn't believe it. Although we couldn't work up the courage to speak to him, we never left the premises; always hanging around behind the drying clothes, never tiring of listening to, and whispering about, this movie-star-like avatar. When the littler ones in the house gathered around him curiously and made him play on demand, we shared the excitement from a distance, too shy to make the first move. 

    After the first day, the sheen of newness began to wear off; the constant deluge of music began to grate on our nerves. The boy seemed to play all day--why couldn't he stop and come and speak to us? We were mildly put off--being the older one, wasn't he supposed to break the ice? The whispers went from admiring to conspiratory, but we continued our strategy of sticking around to listen. Some of the whispers may have wafted to his ears; on the third day, we were surprised when he stopped playing, and came over. With a friendly smile, he asked if we would like to play cards. The two of us were at our speechless, stammering best--we might as well have been Laurel and Hardy carrying out their usual repertoire. But the first step had been taken--matters soon smoothed themselves out. Although the fetters of shyness and strangeness never quite fell off, we were on fairly good terms by the time the wedding was over. All of us returned to the strange lands we were destined to call home, and Life went about its usual course. Every once in a while  waves of memory would bring back snatches of the Intriguing Cousin and his sweet tunes, and I would grin, thinking about how thunderstruck we all were.

THE NEWS

    A year had passed, interspersed with joyful news about the astonishing accomplishments of the multi-talented (as was later revealed) Long-Lost Cousin that added to my fascination and admiration. Mr. Perfect was obviously well on his way to greatness.

     On a usual, languid weekend afternoon, the News found its way to us through a short phone call to my dad. The way he said "SHIT." and the look on his face filled me with awful foreboding. An earlier phone call bore the news of the Accident--my Guitar-Strumming Cousin was hurt. This one, apparently, was the last straw--my mom started weeping, and my dad turned red-eyed, with a look on his face that I hadn't seen before.  Nobody said anything, and I was afraid to ask. Maybe he was more seriously hurt than they had all thought. Of course he'll get better--my parents always get overly worked up over the family matters happening hundreds of miles away from them. But then my mom said: "It's all over..."  Ha! Leave it to my mom to be so dramatic 

(NOTHINGSWRONGNOTHINGSWRONGDONT BELIEVEHERDONTBELIEVEHER...) 

      I could not bring myself to clarify; to ask The Question--it was laughable; impossible. I didn't want to know the Answer. Stowing away the blackness beginning to fill the pit of my stomach, I went about the day as usual, trying to shut out my mom's weepy face, and avoiding my sister's questions. I had almost re-established normalcy, forgetting the events of the afternoon, when my cousin sister, her husband and the kids came over from Abu Dhabi. (JUSTAVISITJUSTAVISITNOTHINGSWRONGHESDEADNONONONONO NOTHINGSWRONG)  

     The elders looked grave and teary--nobody said much. The kids were as nonplussed as me. Soon, the parents began to talk. I shut the door of our room, where the kids were playing--I didn't want them (or myself) to hear anything. At all. Inspite of all efforts, we heard. In a loud phone conversation, with awful, unavoidable clarity: "Yes....he passed away...bike accident...". The world froze for a moment, and then--nothing. The news was immediately rejected by our minds--it was ridiculous and irrational. It simply could not happen. For us, the Intriguing Cousin was still in his home, probably watching TV, or studying, or making plans to go out....anything else was impossible. Unacceptable.

     The tears never came--except once, much later, with only the bathroom mirror as witness. But I was soon lulled back into the same illusion, made more comfortable by the fact that it was all so far, far away. My dad immediately left for India and came back a couple of days later with something horrible and sad in his eyes, and my mother wept over the phone everyday--but it could all be shut out. After a while, things went back to normal, as they inevitably, painfully do, and the cocoon was complete; nothing had ever happened. The Musical Cousin was probably sailing through college, raking in the trophies with his massive talents, living the colourful life that he was meant to lead. I learnt to fill my head with such thoughts; to fight off the massive blackness that threatened to flood all the memories related to Him.

THE PRESENT

   Now, as I sit in my aunt's house (higher studies has brought me to  the place that has been her home for so long) studying and wondering about my college life ahead,  upkeep of the perfected farce becomes increasingly difficult. There is no distance to protect me now. Massive, enlarged photographs of His face hanging upon the wall, so close that I have to sneak a glance every now and then to ensure that His languid eyes didn't just wink at me. Posters of the rock concert held in his memory. The teary puffiness that shows up in my aunt's eyes sometimes. Her muffled sniffles at night as she lies beside me. My uncle, pondering in a frighteningly matter-of-fact way about the senselessness of it all.  A doomed sense of the sheer inadequacy of anything I might have to do or say in response makes me afraid to even breathe in such situations.  It makes me want to run far, far away--back to where I could fool myself.

   And yet, it's easier in some ways: his well-built form is skilfully photoshopped into every family photograph taken after.... (NOTHING), the way his parents speak of him as if he is just....gone for a while. Most of the people for whom He was a part of their lives seem so...normal. Have they accomplished the insurmountable task of Moving On, or have they succeeded at my strategy as well?  All I can say is, mine's falling apart. Little things--a picture, a word uttered by someone--let loose a deluge of heavy blackness upon my spirits. Each time, it takes longer to coax myself into my manufactured thoughts of a Living, Breathing, albeit Out-of-Sight Cousin. I dread the day when I can no longer do so.

      In the living room is a glass case displaying His guitar, complete with lighting. Sometimes, when I quietly creep into the living room for a middle-of-the-night drink of water or a snack, I look into the case, half expecting the guitar to not be there. In bed, I imagine the dusty terrace of our family house, long since sold and abandoned, ready to be demolished. And if I try hard enough, I can see a shadowy figure in the corner and hear the mad, beautiful strumming that breaks through the sad quietness of the lonely night.

As I Lay Down To Sleep

  Dear city-dwellers, have you noticed how the sky is almost always starless, but the ground below is packed with a million garish pinpoints of light? I wrote this quite one a while ago on a night when I missed the stars a little more than usual.

As I lay down to sleep, I glanced

Outside my bedside window

To see just how the starlight danced

And made the night-sky glow,

One last time, before sweet sleep

Drew across my sight

The same soft veil of darkness deep

That enrobed the arcane night.

But alas! The world seemed upside down:

T‘was the earth that shimmered with light;

It had robbed night of her Jewels and Crown

And she sadly mourned her plight.

Clad in black of the deepest hue

She looked on, sad and bare,

As the lights below, within my view

Shone on without a care.

Rose-Petal Red

It felt like flying. She was running down the street so fast that everything around her was a blur. It was as if her legs, pumping up and down rapidly, would cease to touch the ground any moment, and she would float above the road, above the street, above everything else. She felt like a goddess. But not because of the feeling of the wind rushing past her face, or her heart beating in her ears-no, it was her skirt. Long and soft and flowing around her legs as she ran, and most importantly, red. A red so beautiful and deep that she simply couldn’t take her eyes off it. It seemed to be made of the delicate petals of the fragrant roses that she saw everyday in the florist’s shop. It was this red that made her run so fast; that made her feel like she could fly. And the pure joy that filled her soul was almost painful. But she ran, her skirt flying about her- she ran on and on and on and-

She awoke.

This wasn’t the first time her dream had been broken by dawning consciousness. But each time, she felt a sadness so, so deep that tears welled up in her eyes. And no matter how hard she tried to tell herself that it was just a dream; that it would always be a dream, she invariably pined for that feeling of having the deep red fluttering about her knees. But it lasted for moments only. She had learnt to lock up her longing someplace deep within her heart, where it could be forgotten until the next morning, when she would wake up, once again, from the same dream. As the sadness slowly quieted itself, she became aware of her surroundings. In the dim light of sunshine that crept in through the tears in the tin-and-tarpaulin roof, she could make out the familiar things that populated her everyday life. The cramped space within the crumbling, stained brick walls was filled with a plethora of articles that were all as worn out, dirty and old as the slum in which they lived. A corner with a few chipped, broken and dented tins and utensils that marked it out as the kitchen. There, beside the tiny stove with a sputtering flame, squatted her mother, trying, as usual, to coax a meal out of the few scraps that they had.

Seeing the smoke, her stomach rumbled. But it was a familiar feeling, this achy emptiness-it accompanied her throughout her waking hours. The little food she sometimes ate would only placate it for a while-it would return soon. But like her family, and all others who lived like her, she had learnt to consider it a part of her being- sadness, happiness, anger, hunger. The one place where she could be free of it was in her sleep-only her dream existed in that realm; only the redness and the softness and the happiness. She was young enough to have dreams that were vivid and bright- the darkness that pervaded her life had not yet violated her sleep. It soon would, like it did for all the others who lived this life, but for now, her dreams were safe.

That’s why she liked to sleep. She could dream, without hunger and the weakness that accompanied it, the dankness of her home, the endless noise of the roaring city, the endless silence of her perpetually tired mother whose eyes had lost their gleam long ago. But now, even that comfort was being denied to her. A girl in the slum, who was born weak and was always in a hunger-induced sleep, hadn’t woken up one day. Maybe her poor, emaciated body had become too weak to anchor her soul to this world. Since then, her mother was too afraid to let her sleep, unless at night. But she did not understand what all the fuss was about. All the girl did was escape into her world of dreams. She had dreamt for so long that she had forgotten about the real world. Wasn’t that a wonderful thing? She wished that she too, could forever live in her dream, and never have to wake up to the darkness. But then, she could not bear the thought of her mother tearing at her hair and beating her breast like the demented, screaming, wailing creature that the girl’s mother had become after the girl was taken away.

The one thing that made her life bearable was her elder brother. She had never seen her father, and could not muster up the courage to ask her mother about him. But all she needed was her brother. Even when her mother would never smile, and tears would flow down her face for no reason, her brother’s reassuring smile would make everything all right. It was only to him that she had dared to confide her one dream in life- to own a brand new red skirt that would be the envy of all the other girls. Laughing, he had promised her that he would get one for her once he got a job. And the dream had become more enticing, the skirt redder, and the joy more intense ever since. But things were not going well, she knew. Her brother often went away in the morning in search of work, and came back empty-handed. Sometimes, she would see the same look on her mother’s face cross her brother’s-that same shadow. He would look like a stranger then, and it would fill her with fear. But seeing her anxious look, her brother would smile, and return to his old self. He would tease her about her skirt, and make her giggle. Every morning, it was the sight of her brother’s sleeping face beside her that helped her stow away the last, lingering traces of the sadness.

But this morning, the place beside her on the worn-out mat was empty. She sat up, looked around, and asked her mother where he was. Without turning, her mother replied that he had left early. This was unusual. Maybe her brother had heard of a well-paying job and set out early to be the first one. Maybe her dream was about to come true. She smiled. But she tried to put the thought away- it was not good to wish too hard. Hope was a dangerous thing in a place like this, where dreams never came true.

Her brother did not return in the afternoon, as he did when his search proved futile. Dare she hope, then? But she chided herself for expecting too much. She tried to tell herself that her brother wouldn’t buy the skirt even if he did get paid- what about food and the million other things that they needed? But the secret glow of possibility remained, no matter what.

It had become dark, and her brother had not returned as yet. Her hope had turned to fear- discreet, yet nagging. She could see the worry in her mother’s eyes as well. This had never happened before. But she sat at the doorstep and waited, eyes glued to the road. Then, in the badly lit street, she saw a silhouette that seemed familiar. Her heartbeat quickened. Was it him? Was it her brother, running home to show her the one gift she had wanted all her life? But as the figure drew closer, her face fell. It was just her brother’s friend. As soon as he drew close enough for her to see his face, fear numbed her. She felt nothing else, saw nothing else but the moving lips of the boy, uttering terrible words. “He was returning home…. someone tried to steal his wages…..fight…..market…hit on the head…..” She did not see or hear her mother leaping up with a scream; she did not feel the ground beneath her as she ran towards the market. She was deaf to her mother screaming her name-all she knew was that she had to go.

It felt like flying. She was running down the street so fast that everything around her was a blur. It was as if her legs, pumping up and down rapidly, would cease to touch the ground any moment, and she would float above the road, above the street, above everything else. The black terror that welled within her made her feel faint. But she ran, her skirt flying about her- she ran on and on and on and-

She saw him.

She pushed through the crowd around him, and sat down beside where he lay. He seemed to be sleeping. Yes, he was sleeping. Like the girl, he must be living in his dream. Slowly stroking his cold forehead, she smiled. He would be happy forever. Lest he wake up, she slowly lifted his head onto her lap, and ran her fingers through his hair, as her mother sometimes used to. That was when she saw it.

Slowly creeping onto her skirt from beneath her brother’s head, with a warmth that made it seem alive, was the beautiful rose-petal red of her dreams.

Black and White

Each day, before our very eyes

Are sights that turn warm blood to ice;

Each horrific inhuman act

Spreads blackness upon impact.

Here we sit, so safe and tame,

And glibly deplore and exclaim,

But, before you point fingers,

Address this one thought that lingers:

What makes us all stand apart

From those we brand as 'without heart'?

What if we were the cursed ones

Born to wield the knives and guns?

What if the throne of wealth and fame

Was suddenly ours to claim?

What voice is strong enough to say:

"Pure I am, and pure I'll stay"?

After all, history is tainted,

Its pages with black painted

Where the power that the oppressed wrest

Did their own minds with black infest/

The world is no chessboard-stagnant,

With blacks and whites so still and constant;

No soul is born with black tattooed

No manner born uncouth and crude,

No heart can claim as inherent

Its whiteness and good sentiment.

How dare we cite religions, races

To blindly blacken innocent faces?

Both White and Black, with unity

Sleep within Humanity,

Co-existent Yin and Yang

Until they're woken with a pang.

Who can predict the mind's courses

When the heart is ravaged by these forces?

Only a will well-tested by Fate

Can keep its path unfailingly straight;

The rest of us, in our cocoons

Of undeserved and lavish boons

Have no right to judge, decry

Or even sententiously sigh:

Our so-called scruples are empty claims;

Un-followed rules of un-played games.

The Smile That Binds

Okay, this one's brand new, and loosely based on experience:

Today-my very first day

In a world unknown;

The flag-off of my foray

Into a life alone.

Foreboding darkens my mind:

What is to be my fate?

I'd left the nest far behind,

Would my wings bear my weight?

The fear within my heart

Is shared by others too,

Each of them at the start,

Each without a clue.

My roving eyes rest upon

The quiet girl beside me:

More frightened and forlorn

Than I could ever be.

We're close enough to share the air,

Yet with an ocean in between:

The gleam of oil on her hair,

On mine, a shampooed sheen;

I hail from a land of fat purses

And she, from a verdant one;

Lives in alien universes,

Beneath the same sky and sun.

I feel ashamed; apologetic

Of my well-fed body;

Hers is lean and athletic-

Her clothes make mine look bawdy.

All differences disappear

As my eyes meet hers,

In them, I see the thrill, the fear,

The same tumultuous universe.

And then, to my utmost surprise,

She flashes me a grin,

As if she too, saw in my eyes

The same turmoil within.

A shaft of light; of strength: it streams

Through our kindered minds,

United in our secret hopes;

In a smile that binds.

Komplicated Kin

 Marriages give me indigestion. This could be because of :

a. My non-conformism to antiquated, chauvinist institutional setups

b. Objection towards the uncecessary squandering of good ol' moolah in the name of 'social obligation'.

c. Gold-laden, garrulous women whom you call 'aunty' because you don't know their names, let alone how they are related to you.

   And the answer is....(c)!! Pretty obvious, really. Allow me to expound:

     I am in a hot, crowded auditorium, hoping that no passing person hears the warning rumbles issuing forth from beneath the waistband of my uncomfortably tight churidar bottom (unfortunate signs of said indigestion). There are people everywhere--the men talking loudly, but still outdone by the women with their shining oily faces and shinier raiment. All of them are supposed to be my relatives....and I know about five of them in all. Gulp.

     The pre-planned strategy of hiding behind my mom is falling to pieces--she has disappeared into the roaring vortex of glittery jewellery, loud conversations, and conspiratory whispers of a million bits of gossip floating about. And so I adopt Plan B--avoiding all eyes and mildly distorting my face so that I don't look like anybody of anybody (oh, aren't you so-and-so's daughter? this is how most of the conversations start). Good, this seems to be working. Just as my face begins to hurt and the sweat dripping down my back begins cool unpleasantly, a voice, louder than all others, scares the jasmine out of my hair by shrieking: "OHHHH...MOLLUUU.....DO YOU REMEMBER ME?"

Good God.

   I spin around to face the source of the war-cry-like exclamation: The usual sort--round, middle-aged. Powder sticking in mulchy grey lines lines between the thick folds of her neck. Limp, scanty jasmine garland pinned onto equally limp and scanty hair. Grin looking more predatory than congenial. And more importantly, identity unknown. Damn.

  The deluge of information, interspersed with questions (which i simply cannot answer due to the rapidity with which one follows the other)  begins: "Oh, what are you doing now? Is it engineeering? My daughter is doing engineering. You know my daughter, no? She's doing.......(blablablablah).....You know, it's..........(wow, her teeth are really yellow)........and he said...........(how does a person talk so fast?)....so things are a bit......(what if she runs out of breath, and deflates like a balloon?)......and did you know....."

   It takes a while for her to notice the indescribable expression on my face (similar to the funny videos of babies after they are given lemon to taste). Just as her grin begins to fade with the dawning realisation that I have no inkling of who she is or what she is droning on (and on and on) about, she is called elsewhere by what I assume to be a whole group of such banshee-like specimens. I thank the gods as her grating voice disappears into the general cacophony. Phew. I get to live until the next marriage. Or until the next so-called relative spots me.

I somehow make it on my own until lunchtime-my weird face and furtive looks apparently gave people enough reason to steer clear ("Tsk, tsk, must be that other girl, you know--the one who's not right in the head? Wait-you don't know?? See, what happened is....").  Pretty proud of my subterfuge, I proceed to the dining hall along with a massive throng of people, all equally fond of the delectable spread that awaits them. I somehow manage to get a seat. As I sit before the gorgeous banana leaf spread before me, staring hungrily at the tiny portions of curries served on it, my left ear is deafened, this time by a different voice, although a twin of the previous one in terms of volume and quality:

"OHH....MOLLUUUU...REMEMBER ME??"

Double damn.

  

A Perfect Day

    Even the ants were beautiful. As they crawled in a neat line across the branch upon which he sat, he could not help but love how the burning, warning red of their bodies contrasted with the placid mossy brown of the bark. He had to break up their line to securely tie one end of the rope to the branch. He watched as the ants scattered in a million directions, confused by its strange massiveness. He looked down from where he sat, atop the gigantic mango tree in the backyard. It was a familiar sight--after all, he'd climbed up this tree a million times to seek refuge amidst the scented foliage. Climbing trees--that was all he was ever good at. That's what everyone said: all their tirades invariably started off with the statement of this one hopelessly unalterable fact.

    What did they want, then? For him to have a LIFE, they said. Life? For him, life had always been the beautiful yellow of the butterflies' wings, the scent of imminent rain in the wind,  the soft flank of a cow...but not for them, no. Life for them meant a job ("Daydream all day.....Ha! THAT will get you a job!"), a 'name' ("You will bring shame upon the family!"), a purse and a wife that would remain perpetually fat ("Look at all those girls--you think any of them will marry a good-for-nothing?"). Just like all his friends, they said. His friends--the names that once used to comfort him with their familiarity had become testimonies of all the things he could never achieve. They had, over the years, left his side and joined the million pairs of eyes that bore down upon him, full of derision; devoid of understanding.

    As a boy, he would spend hours--on trees, beside ponds, in the woods--simply learning the quietly wondrous ways of nature. That's how they began: it started with 'Oh, he's just shy, quiet' and slowly escalated to 'A little off in the head, that boy,' as he grew. The open rebukes at his behaviour turned into quiet whispers behind his back. Do it for a living then, they finally said, with exasperation that was becoming more and more evident. But the diagrams on the flat paper textbooks did not come alive like they were supposed to; the million words provided none of the clarity he had hoped for. That path came to a dead end, too.

    He tried--God knows, he tried. But the world that had revealed all its secret colours and scents to him as he sat atop the tree became sullen and unobliging whenever he sought a path. He hated it; he hated it all. Why couldn't they leave him alone?

    And now he was back in his haven. Everything fell into place here. There was no accusation in the chirrups of the birds. Even the wary squirrels accepted his presence after a few terse moments. over the years, the people he knew had acquired a cruel, hardened sheen. But these greens leaves were as soft and pliable, and the breeze as gentle, as they had always been.

    The ants had continued their march--this time, over the rope--as he sat, lost in his thoughts. He took care not to disturb them as he tied the other end of the rope to his neck. But the neat line descended into chaos once again as he leapt off the branch with a violent jerk. The confusion extended throughout the tree and its denizens as the branch twitched for a while, for just a little while. When all was still, all the deserters slowly returned. The birds resumed their perky chirping, and the old tree and its inhabitants settled back into their well-oiled routine of Life. And the world that at once completed him and tore him apart with its maddening secrets continued its never ending, cyclic motions, even as his heart was forever stilled. The flowers danced, and the sun shone forth from a spotless sky.

It was a perfect day.

When I Close My Eyes

This marks the beginning of my efforts to build an online database of sorts of my (pre-existent, mind you--these are not on-the-spot flashes of literary genius) writings. A poem, that-- after ages of trying and failing in different pieces-- I managed to write in near-perfect metre:

Sometimes, when I close my eyes,
The lamp isn't a lamp at all,
Instead, I see a bright sun rise
Right up on my bedroom wall.


The atmosphere is no more glum,
As birdsong floats down from the trees,
Is that the air-conditioner's hum,
Or the whisper of a breeze?


The cramped apartment disappears,
As fragrant flowers surround me,
The smoggy sky instantly clears;
There's blue as far as I can see.


The drip-drop of a leaky tap
Becomes a tinkling, flowing stream,
That distant roof's a mountain cap,
Where translucent icicles gleam.


The streetlights- dull and dreary things-
Turn into rows of stately pines;
The very air dances and sings
Around them, as they stand in lines.


The speeding jet that stains the sky
As it leaves behind smoky trails
Is an eagle, gliding up so high
As if to race the clouds and gales.


But when I do open my eyes,
The peace is lost; the dream is flown,
And I mourn for the paradise
That exists in my mind alone.

 I am glad to be writing now from a  place where the paradise isn't entirely lost (sorry to disagree, Mr.Milton)...where the wind does whisper through the leaves, where the sun does paint the foliage with flecks of gold, where a quiet night breeze surprises me with it's secret scent of flowers; where I don't have to close my eyes quite so hard.