Nit-Picker’s Ballad

March 1, 2013 by Usha Pisharody 15 Comments

On the loveless shores of dissatisfaction
He wanders, dark and sombre.
She said she loved him, you see.
And he wonders why.

You, the reader, would now smell a skunk.
You don’t? You’re supposed to. There!
Why does he wonder why! Because, you think?
Fine. But why?

He wonders, that’s why.
Now, why he should, does it matter at all?
No, you think? Why not, I ask.

Walking the shores, with promises of love
Given endless dreams, and lustrous hopes
A hand held warm, a heart cosseted gently
Why would he wonder? Why should he?

But then he is that alter ego of everyman
The one that never takes on trust,
The one that fell foul of love
The one who found no love within.

And yet that one, too, is he
That quietly stood, and braved the angst
When she lost her mooring.
Gathered her when she was washed ashore
From a tumultuous voyage, bereft, and battered.
She knew. Though he did not.
Saviour he was not. Survivor, he was.
As was she.

A pause to this tale, here now;
To tell you how love, it creeps upon you.
Perhaps to envelope, perhaps to smother,
But always to fill each pore, till replete it is.
And so it was, with her. She knew.
And so it was, with him. He did not.

So there comes, then, this moment:
Survivor to survivor; the honesty of a heart,
The unfathomable depths of utterance
And the incomprehensible betrayal of the ear.

She confessed. He ran.
In circles, on that loveless shore afore mentioned.
What then? The storyteller is asked.
What then? And you wait with bated breath.
Willing a fairy tale to happen.
Knowing that some things are never to be.

Will he stay?
Will she accept, then?

But ah! The threads, they dissemble, the weave fragmented…
And the spell of the storyteller is broken.
He sighs. His gnarled fingers wrap themselves around his staff.
And on, he plods.

Thinking, dreaming, of what could have been.
Had he stayed.

1 March, 2013
Online, on yet another silly line of thought 🙂

Part II of this ballad, so-called, is here (LINK) – edited to add on 18 Jan, 2015