Poetry:
Mahesh Paudyal
The Gardener
The gardener belongs to the flowers
but the flowers do not belong to him.
It has always been so in the world
right from the remotest fringe of creation.
It was he who planted perspirations
in this ruddy garden as old as mountains
and made colors bloom.
Where didn’t his time, translated on flowers
reach with the flow of history?
It reached the neck of His Majesty,
the hood of the victor,
temple of the Lord,
corpse in the farthest churchyard,
hands of a lover—
and he?
For generations
he has been keeping a watch over his garden
singing the ditties of the soil.
The owner of the garden has returned home today,
after many, many years from the city.
With him has come home an old debenture
of loans, owed through generations.
He will auction the garden now.
The floral civilization will be murdered,
songs will be butchered,
verses will be eliminated,
and with that, a tender identity will be annihilated.
The owner shall be cleared of the inherited debt in a while.
What will happen of the Gardener
who raised smiles
from his heart wedded to flowers?
