A Journeying Day: Frailty

Canto I, Verso I.

Burning ghats twirling so the smoke rises
upon a Bhagirathi plain. A misty haze
cold when felt, merging into the tears
of families birthed into a Sissyphian cycle.

Pilgrimed cadavers fragmented into a
kaleidoscope; the rousing of sleeping souls
that ride her waves. Just lifeless arms and legs
resurfacing now and then, to travel
through the byways of samsara.

Decay in all of her macabre presence,
laid prone and viewed for mortal suspicion
of people being ferried by foot for miles
to bathe, to wish, but to not see this'¦

A light rainy shower upon the

Rusty water, tainting words never known
in its entirety. A Dravidian whisper
mutters to my ears: we left our Aryan Steppes
for our horses to keel over in these waters

bleeding into the landscape for a war,
whose reasons were more important
a millennia ago. They are not now
in this time and place,

for dreams have faded from the muddied huts;
baked and fiery to the touch
by the arid air of a sweltering
Punjab,

and as I look over

those Tributaries that once ensnared
thousands of blue-blooded sons, will
be laid to rest as it does by cover of night
where the darker nature

will forget them all, ignoring many
a plea to negate a reminder of our frailty.
For just one day has passed on her Vedic land
And Shiva assumes her form once more.

© 2007 Ethan Hammond

Hmmm...just a short explanation:


I am tempted to write a synopsis of why each of the stanzas feel so disparate and isolated, but there are 4 themes that pervade through the piece; the idea of relatedness (the family, whose body floats down the river is of Dravidian ancestry), that death and frailty can be felt by not just the present generation of Indians, but the very first inhabitants of the land. That our finality can be a taboo, but for some reason the presence of a river can allow the discussion of our fears of human weakness (i.e. death) in an otherwise exotic culture.

The Dravidians were an Aryan group(Indo-Caucasian)that had originated from the prehistoric cities of Harappa and Mahenjadaro, the earliest civilisations that were situated along the Indus Valley and the Punjab. They lived in square huts ("for dreams have faded from the muddied huts;
baked and fiery to the touch, by the arid air of a sweltering Punjab"), lined in formation with a town square, a citadel a central worshiping area. This complex was encircled by a clay city wall. The Indus had flooded numerous times, but the downfall of these 2 progenitors of culture was thought to have been destroyed by flooding from the named river. So some Dravidians moved southward to the Ganges.

The person, whose family mourns is probably of Dravidian ancestry. A lot of Indians have some Caucasian blood in them, so a subtle link is made that stages of life and human emotions do not skip generations. They are inbult along with other life stages; childhood, coming of age, adulthood etc and other hardwired emotions :crying, laughing etc.

One section of the Ganges is called Bhagirathi and this is named after a Goddess who had wanted to seek refuge on Earth. As she was a deity, it was said that she would descend from the heavens as water, with Vishnu cushioning some of the brute force of all this water impacting on the earth.

Death and human mortality have been depicted in this poem from one cultural-religious view, but the appearance of a corpse ("Just lifeless arms and legs, resurfacing now and then")is the same for everyone, as well as the propensity to bleed from injury).

Blue blooded sons refer to King Sagara's sons, of whom Shiva had granted the auspicious honour to the king of 60,000 sons. All of whom died in the Ganges and were immediately liberated from the cycle of suffering (Samsara). This stanza just highlights that frailty is just as much of an experience for the powerful; not just suffering reserved for the lowest of men. Sisyphus is mentioned to highlight the link between Eastern and Western philosophy and how different cultures describe humans ails in similar ways; the idea of Sisyphus enduring an eternal task of frustration by rolling a boulder up a steep mountain with no summit to be viewed, can also be considered in that Sisyphus may choose to be liberated from his human mind; the futile boulder pushing as an exercise in resisting the urge to succumb to a very human suffering. A possibility presents itself that even boulder pushing gives meaning to a very unpredictable life.

The poem then concludes that no matter where we are and what we believe that at one stage of our lives we will be given an inherent meaning through the trials and tribulations we face. Also nature can turn a blind eye for our wishes to be immortal to the extent that sometimes she cannot hear our bereavements.

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