Winter's Prelude - Somte Ralte

                                                  Distant mountains wrapped in lavender clouds

Standing resilient against nature’s ravages;

Beneath the vastness of the bluest skies

Lulled by gurgling streamlets;

Your stories are the whispers of the wind

Fabled by monotonous whistles of the valleys.

 

Beyond your running chains, you are nought-

Succumbed by perilous lines of orderly governance,

Undone by new stories that validate

The fallacy of an apathetic century’s rule.

Amidst the struggle for rightful heirdom, you remain

An enigmatic mass of spiralling mounds

 

Gazing long at the unbreakable silence,

While your sides plummet and your cores tremble,

You convene with the maddening skies

To bring all things to their causal pass;

While we wary in our earthly commotion

Seeking for an assurance of normalcy,

 

Some wounds are yet to heal,

Some truths are yet to surface;

And I wonder, standing on this windy hillock

Bathed in your evening’s endearing hues:

Will your stories ever be the whispers of my mouth,

Or your fables, the monotonous lines of my verse?

 

 

Somte Ralte, a writer whose works have been featured on the blog a couple of times before, was awarded a Ph.D. in English literature last year, published a collection of poetry in October also last year, and has just started working at a college in Bangalore. This particular piece, she says, is her "response to the present ramri buai situation (the escalation of hostilities between Mizoram and Assam over the boundary dispute).  It's disheartening to see how things are unfolding till date towards the border-issue, and more so at our apparent disengagement from the issue."