Echoes

Echoes

Do these still standing pillars still listen for the war cries that haunted it’s inhabitants?
Do they still await the return of the unnamed heroes whose blood colours the bricks ?
Are there still cracks in the foundation that somone actively fills in fear of everything collapsing,
Do you still stand there calling out my name as it echoes in the dry wind?

I am still dressed in the stola that you had wrapped around me,
like a promise that is bound too tightly and tears under the stress into tattered strings,
maybe there were women who stood before me saying these very words that I am uttering,
maybe this is how the Helen of Troy looked at devastation of her love that men caused in her name.

These books call our pillars ruins now, like their fate had to be named to be understood,
rubble now accumulates on the paved roads where our hands had first interwoven with each other,
yet the stream where you dropped coins wishing for our togetherness still gurgles and smiles,
it wraps around this scorched land like your arms around my waist.

The air tastes a little bit arid now, unlike the wine laden glory that it felt like before,
it still swirls around me like the children of our neighbourhood playing made up games,
in my memory the streets still bustle without any traces of war and death,
in my dreams the Gods are merciful enough to leave us common folk out of the gruesome glory of the demigods.

Still I exist here, I am neither alive in this realm nor is my body dead in Hades’ realm,
I am just a spirit that inhabits a history that time and Gods long left behind in textbooks and stories,
there are so many like me now, they all curse the names that history sings praises of,
they all wander around, victims of a fight for honour that they had no stakes in.

I still wait for you at the pillars that you left me at when you had to leave to fight,
the tattered stola wrapped around shoulders that are tired of the burdens of a cruel fate,
I still fill the cracks in the foundations, fearing they will fall before your return, it’s been centuries now,
I still call out to you into the dry wind, can you hear the echoes of your name ?

Stola- ancient Roman attire