THE LAST RITES

The Last Rites
Away from the bank of that bloody sea
where his descendants fought and lay massacred
by bloodied hands of each other;
their Karma led through the winding maze,
now worked out to the logical end.
He , the witness, the Supreme Lord
who knew the intricate ways of destiny,
knew, now the moment had come
when his own Karma had come to an end,
the reason, the purpose for which He came
simply to hasten the processes of Karma
that found no way
in the midst of the ignorance, the confusion of minds,
in the midst of the long journeys of lives,
relationships caught in the vortices of the essential strifes of the humanity.
He viewed the panorama of His own life
as he sat, his back against the bark of the tree,
laying down arms with which he had killed
in a divine wrath, his kith and kins.
Yes, He was Krishna at the end of his life,
resting quietly and starkly alone,
counting his last breaths
as he sat at the foot of the tree,
shot through in his foot by a mistaken dart
of a hunter prowling in  the dark.
Neither thoughts nor feelings crossed his mind,
the days of childhood bliss in the midst of
the innocent cowherds who did not know
who their playful mate really was,
all the memories of love and war
now erased like a dream out of the sky.

And thus he died, alone and unsung by his tribe.
And the legend I heard was that
some tribals came and saw him dead,
a tired old warrior, too smeared in the face
by dust that had covered the dried up blood.

Not knowing what kind of final rites
the man deserved,
they carried the corpse to the sea
and let it flow with the rising tide
where its destined resting place was going to be.

After days of a voyage on the back of the tide
the body touched the shores of a distant southern coast.
At night as the body was floating in the sea before it landed
on the southern coast,
a priest of a temple on that shore
dreamt of a divine being
wanting to be heard by him.
"Go and seek the coastline,
the first thing in the morning as you will wake;
I shall be there lying in the sand.
Lift me my friend, with gentle hand
and place me on the pyre, give me the fire I am thirsting for all along!"

The morning led the priest to the shore, and to be sure,
there he was lying in the sand!
The priest did what he was told,
holding the sanctimony of the words of the dream
close to his heart through the task.

Today there stands a temple in the name
of Krishna who came
and rested for a while
before the body was cast to the flames.