The Parrot and the Old Sparrow

 

After a long, hard, heavy, wearisome journey

at sun down,

its will a bit cast down

and temper with a little frown,

The parrot with wings tired,

its beautiful colours all mired

in hard journey’s perspiration

landed on a branch.

Winter was at its peak,

And anxious, drooping, panting was the beak,

With every minute saffron slanting rays

were melting into misty bays,

Cold was slowly creeping up

and its pinch was becoming bold

to take everything in its hold,

With sad eyes it ogled at the setting sun,

Too long and taxing had’n the run

and long forgotten was the flight’s fun,

(Where was that fleeting, winged pun?)

With each mile the journey had become a drag

and vigour and energy that uplifted him with a brag

were now dumped in some pit,

Last ounce of strength was then hit,

But still he had far to go,

while his elevation became continuously low,

Before the eventuality did he bow

and anchored his feathery weight

upon a branch’s restful bait,

‘Merciless, frost-fanged will be the night,’

he thought to his misery’s delight,

As the warmth vapoured off his body,

Shudder came over him with incremental ease,

Anxiously he ruffled his feathers

as if to loosen cold night’s siege,

Where to spend the night

he thought from depression’s highest heights,

Suddenness of sunset made him realize

the possible utility of the remaining time,

And he looked around like

the feeble truth emanating from a sad rhyme,

For miles long everything appeared

surrendered to the twilight’s imminent pal,

And all wood appeared solid and creviceless;

without that niche which is a bird’s hall,

Before his despair and agony touched another peak,

he heard a muffled, breaking-free, old, juvenile shriek,

An old sparrow,

its grayish patches long under time’s harrow,

was seen bathing in a puddle,

Seeing him his senses went into a chilly huddle,

‘Hey, such a cold night in waiting!

Take care it does not become death’s baiting!

Fellow, you must take care

and must not extend your dare

to the extent of your doom!’

 

The sparrow squeaked and shrieked with zoom,

‘My old coat has enough room

for the water to turn vapours

and shun and beat death’s creepers!’

With his saggy, drenched feathering

the sparrow flew to him for a hearing,

And the visitor’s problem was told,

Said the sparrow becoming gracious and bold,

‘Dear, I have no family

and live in a banyan crevice,

Come with me, I’m at your service!’

It was a horribly chilly night,

No light for miles to sight,

Chilly rainstorm beat against the tree

to uproot the shackles and set it free,

But the tree was strong,

It withstood the deathly throng.

‘I live here all alone,

Though reminiscences sometimes come to moan

over my beautiful, active past,

Darted when I fast

and voowed damsel sparrows with finesse,

Raised families as the cost for my instinct’s ecstasies,

Then age caught with me,

Now eyes no longer see

the beauties of this world around,

but sense the death’s bloodthirsty hound.

Still I live happily as the tail-end

of that great life lived,

Enjoyed I the choices that fate sieved,

Now, I have to pick up and play

among those things and chaff discarded

which remain unwanted above

as the fine particles trickle below,

Steadily this discarded heap grew

While I enjoyed the sieve’s fine brew,

Now I roll like a kid in that rubble of the past

which was once waylaid by the youth’s blast,

It now becomes the precious wealth

of my old age,

Shiny becomes the rage in this haze,

There are no takers for it now,

So I enjoy it all alone

without that competition’s drone,

Happily I’m all alone with my age old,

And try even to become bold

against this winter’s hold,

During youth I flew majestically high

To beat cold by my blood warmth,

But now wisdom swarmth,

And I still find ways

to brightly lit my days with these feeble rays,

In this cosy wood-hole of mine

Drunk I’m with my age’s vintage wine,

I know that I may not go out of this hole

to ride softly on time’s back at some dawn,

When mortality may pick up the pawn,

Leaving this old feathering engraved

in this very woody niche,

But that does not make me sick,

Because that sleep does not seem

different from the one that I now enjoy,

The pitcher of desire no longer exists,

Neither is it empty

so that I must have desires to have it full,

Nor it is full, so that I should browbeat

being afraid of losing it,

The sinews holding life to my body

have become impassive, senseless and bloodless,

They will not feel the pain of cleavage:

It will be just like an autumn leaf

being painlessly windblown into oblivion,

In this tepid existence of mine,

devoid of both heat and cold,

warmth and coolness prevail in some

pleasant, vague proportion,

Pleasure and pain seem to have lost their specificities:

Neither both exist, nor are they dead.

You are young and colourful!

How come you look so submissive and sad?

Have the conditions been so bad

to steal and rob all the real charm

and leave the colour on the feathers and soul

so dull and poor?’  

 

The parrot spoke:

‘Though I am young

but the spirit seems to have sung

the last song of life,

Too much has been the pain and strife,

My spirit seems to have run dry now,

Though the colour on my feathers holds somehow,

When just a hatching, father was gone,

Grew I hearing mother’s moan,

The paternal sun thus never shone,

Still the biggest consolation was mother’s

caressing, preening, feeding beak,

Ate I fruits at love’s supreme-most peak,

As the sole nestling

I was fattened on her labours daylong,

And then went to sleep hearing her lullaby song,

Aha! Sweetest dreams came with a throng!

My whole existence was tethered

to that maternal pole,

The brightest, attractive-most star sole!

Under her great grooming,

colours on my feathering came bright,

Lavishly they flashed as I fluttered

them for my first flights,

Unbelievable was the pride and compassion

as her soaring soul’s maternal shades

touched the brightest heights,

In her eyes I saw a new light,

How marvelous was that sight! 

Alas her incorruptible love of yore

was arrowed by the fatality’s shot,

Again cupid’s arrow came hot,

I became a past with negligence and rot,

She was now in another spring of love,--

Incipient love for the future in her womb,

I thus became an orphan

even though my parents lived,

After many cries and

anguished aimless flights bereaved,

Life’s burden with my soft feathers I heaved,

Young and beautiful, flew I with

time’s oblivion and balm,

Intoxicating is such youth’s charm.

Inevitably I fell in love,

Heartfully I cooed my beautiful lady,

Those love-lorn days when the heart

was ever ready to sing an ecstatic ditty,

Such a wealth was in my kitty,

So sweet, silent, mirthful, unencumbering

were those acceptances of nuptial responsibilities,

Those watchful, eager searches for niches

in trunks for our nest,

Tirelessly we wandered around for the best,

Guided by the love’s brace

we found our place,

In some tiny hole

nothing else but we had all the role,

Our identities melted into each other,

How proud was I when I became father,

I’ll not become like my parents, I thought,

I will not be ensnared like they were caught,

So I clung to my possessions with pride,

But the inevitability came with a chide,

In full bloom of youth and colours

all of my brood flew away,

My lady-bird came to be infatuated

under someone’s cooing sway,

It was another fine day

when she bade adieu and flew away,

I embodied all forlornness,

All my loss was glaring in my face

monstrously unremedied,

I decided to leave that place,

And my sulking wings did brace

to take up the longest possible flight

from the place where such unfaithfulness abound,

So flew I as if pursued by

fearsome-most flying hound,

For many days I have been flying

with my soul aching and wings crying,

Why should we enter into something

and love somebody so completely,

if it is bound to go into gutters,

Isn’t all such temporary dives

into life all banal?

Aren’t we cogs in the hands of those

inevitable, unstoppable processes?’

 

The old sparrow, full of wisdom,

Undisputed king of his life’s kingdom,

Spoke with the solace and simplification of age,

When youth’s dilemmas no longer

haunt with their pinch and rage.

 

The sparrow said:

‘It’s just like a flower ruing

and weeping over other blooms,

because its beauty will not last forever

and will go to the glooms,

Dear, it’s not we who are the ends,

Rather the beautiful phenomena like

love, marriage, procreation that decide the trends,

We are just the means to these

beautiful ends and destinations,

So, become a tool uncomplaining,

tilling earth without any expectations,

It is not that love exists

because we do love someone,

Love is the primordial sea without any

limits of space, time and individualities,

It is we who sweeten a few

moments of life with it,

till the chaotic, destructible existences get hit,

Do we procreate to cling to procreation life long?

No! We are made to procreate

to become unselfish means for the propagation,

for handing over the batons,

to perpetuate these beautiful phenomena of

love and relationships,

We do not leave behind an offspring,

but a possible instrument

which might come in handy for

the sustenance and survival of

those very precious moments

that got us the taste of love, happiness

and contentment at their best,

And if we recognize that

then our spirit gets a solacing rest,

If not,

then caught in the web of selfish net,

we acrimoniously bet

that I completely loved her

and became the cause of young lives,

It was I who caused that buzzing in those hives,

But such limitations would have been

meaningful had our survival unlimited,

or say our immortality was uninhibited,

But our journeys are to be ended,

So just cherish those moments that you tended,

If you cling to these phenomena

like they are your inheritance forever,

They become a drag around your neck,

making you a prisoner behind the bars,

which you create around yourself,

Liberate fella! Liberate yourself!

Become a journeyman who understands that

young flowers on a plant,

young shoots on a twig

do not lessen themselves or the spring,

in not ruing over their wispy autumnal dismantling,

for they inculcate phenomena,

They help perpetuate nature

And they sustain the beautiful,

natural concepts of beauty and bloom,

They also served in a similar way,

made some new ray (though it is only light)

to decimate in some shadows, some gloom.’

 

The long fabric of the stormy night

was slowly lifted over their head,

Outside, stormy chilliness was fleeting

before a promising twilight,

Chances were there for a day bright,

Clouds parted from the face of the sky,

The parrot’s spirits cut through the shadows

and soared high,

The old sparrow said:

‘The day today is warm and sunny,

The dawn promises sweet honey,

Youngman, I’m in hurry to come out of my hole

and play my chirpy role

in the beautiful stage set around,

My soft soufflés and feeble light in my eyes

are enough even for the down-hilly afternoon,

 You but go high,

because the forenoon is there for you,

with its multi-hue,

Go, so that you do not rue over

the day aimlessly lost,

Do justice to the old spirit of thy host,

Take some lesson from my soft feebleness

and the way I make a day out of my night.’

 

Thanking him the visitor flew away

into those swathes of promise,

where new life, new love, new relationships

held sway!