Love Poem: Grief Outlasting the Time
Pramod Rastogi Avatar
Written by: Pramod Rastogi

Grief Outlasting the Time

Dad, the pangs of sorrows
Pierced my Mom ceaselessly 
Like arrows in her heart, 
Caring and innocent, 
The day you left, years back, 
On your eternal journey
Leaving us all behind.

So much she loved you
She knew not to overcome
The grief that had laid her siege.
Marked by her mourning
That outlasted the time
I have no words to tell you
The anguish that was hers
All her life after your depart.

The day you left us
Had seen her life come apart;
Torn in shreds and pieces,
She saw the polar winter darkness
Set in the plains of her heart.
The life had caved in,
As the jaws of sorrow opened up
To engulf her alive
In their depthlessness unseen.

The violence of pain and shock 
That shook my mother’s life 
Had struck me dumb 
As she wept over
For days, months and years,
In a soul rending way;
Tears running in cascades
Over her cheeks, day and night, 
She knew not how to stop,
As all the desire to live
Had ebbed out from her.

Forty years have gone by
Since that fateful day;
My mother has also left us
To join you in eternal peace.
Still, my heart bleeds
As I remember 
The day of your depart
And the fountain of agony
Sprung out of my mother's heart,
To come dry
Only at her depart.

Standing alone in my thoughts
And in my grief, I pay homage 
To the true love that was theirs
To have let my mother keep alight
The candle of her love
That outlasting the time
She had lit for my father
Relentlessly all these years.