“
Mind without heart
The leaf had fallen,
The branch still stood there intact,
It was a gradual event and not at all sudden,
The fallen leaf, the still existing branch was an undeniable fact,
But why did the branch still hang on, waiting for something?
As the leaf from the floor looked at it while time consumed it,
Maybe the branch wanted to see the leaf on the floor dying,
And with its shadow touch it, and feel it; and whisper to it,
“There where you grew you shall grow again next season,
I will wait for you here throughout the winter,
And to do so, I need no motivation because I have my reason,
I have loved you and I do not wish to be a quitter,”
And finally there was nothing left of the leaf, the fallen and dead leaf,
There was only its trace, a faint impression on the soil,
This added to the branch’s anguish and grief,
For time had robbed her of its every moment of toil,
People passed by and trampled the leaf’s almost fossilised impression,
Until there was nothing left of the leaf neither on the branch nor on the soil,
The branch chided the fate’s paucity and time’s baseless aggression,
For they even erased the leaf’s last impression that was as thin as silver foil,
By the time winter entered its prime,
The branch stood there waiting for it to pass,
Not because it wanted to feel the joys of summer time,
But it wanted the leaf to re-appear and re-grow so that it could undo time’s act so crass,
Time passed by, spring arrived, the branch was filled with leaves,
But that leaf never grew again, the same leaf, the fallen one,
So the branch misses him and it continuously grieves,
But she shows it to no one, because no leaf compares to her dear leaf, the fallen one,
Maybe that is why it is beginning to bend,
Though it is converted in thousands of fresh leaves,
The branch has been unable to cope with the dear leaf’s premature end,
So she keeps peeping into time’s graves,
To find the grave of the leaf that she lost prematurely,
And lie there beside him, and finally fall,
Then be together with him timelessly,
And say, “For you I too had to fall afterall!”
Today the sun has risen but the branch has fallen forever,
Exactly where the leaf had fallen,
It is a love of different kind, and the branch is a special lover,
Who would never let go of what time from her had stolen,
After a year the branch too disappeared from the floor,
Now there is neither the branch nor the leaf,
Time knows it, fate planned it, but I witnessed it; and this I cannot ignore,
But knowing they are somewhere together now, even if that be the graveyard of time, is a relief,
Time and fate are never obsequious,
Because they neither love nor hate,
But they are masquerading and pretentious,
And they never know how it feels when the branch lies naked in a leafless state,
That is time’s and fate’s irony of which they may never know,
But you and I who have minds and hearts,
Yet become part of a fake and grotesque show,
Where either mind thinks without the heart or the heart from mind’s innocence departs!
”
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