Leaves Have All Fallen Off

Leaves have all fallen off.

The tree stands there

Bare and nude,

Past her days of fecundity

Past her power to survive a sun

Pitiless and crude.

She is no more inviting to birds

Nor is she comforting with her scanty shade,

To travelers' burning thirst.

Knobbly and shriveled up all over,

She ekes out an existence

Without a relevant cause.

Alas! She remembers....

She remembers that many leaves ago

Wind from wild south

Made her dance

From root to the tenderest bough;

She remembers those rainbow days

When sensuous drops came whispering

On her tiny buds and sleepy foliage;

She remembers that life's full tide

Once swelled her blossoms

And made her darling to every living eye.

Now it is night.

Unpunctuated silence.

Quiet incommunicable pain.

The smell of earth is more than ever

Intense.

Yasif Ahmad Faysal teaches English at the Barisal University.