Beautiful decay

From the desk of Vitasta Raina

Time: Irrelevant

Published is Indian Literature Issue 314

Beautiful decay, I could eat you,

split your pale brown gills,

on an autumn afternoon,

and consume your cultural layers.

You with salty crust of ageless expression,

you with the wood grains, patterns of the sea,

of micro-beads and snowflakes,

fractals of societies' self-relieved agony,

inchoate clusters of myth-ridden mohallas,

fungal communes of local habits;

I could collect your inexistent senses,

and break down your unchanged names.

Beautiful decay, on pavements,

in small-worlds, in rotting walls of colonies

alive past their expiration date,

souvenirs of once-life, tombs for now-death.

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