A SAILOR'S NIGHTMARE

Standing there for a long time
The only noise to my ears
Was the sweet everlasting chime
Heard in the offing ... coming from a mile.

Paralysing me from my dreams
I cannot see anything that gleams
In the distant horizon
Even the light wasn't enough from the moon!

I could not decipher whether it was a distant ship,
Or a drowning woman---
Trying to recollect....The last sights of her man,
But I was strangely attracted towards it.

As I was closing in,
With the air of the silent night
Growing thin and thin...
I could hear it very clearly---
Though it wasn't in my sight.

Now that I was so sure
That it was a girl
She was succumbed by the whirl
I was too late to save her!!

There she was floating lifeless,
The water drenched the kid's dress.
No lifeboats came to save her
In spite of her shrill cries.

So innocent she looked,
So cheerful were her eyes,
She could not swim
Still she was floating!!

I didn't know her name,
Nor from where she came,
But she haunted me in my dreams
With her violent overture and screams.

I could not forget her
Even thought she was a stranger in a strange place,
How can I forget her face
When I hear her every night whispering.... in my ears!!



----- Initially I named it A Sailor's Swansong... This was written in the Design of Machine Elements class (Sem 5). SM sir was teaching Rivetted Joints and there I sat my mind lost somewhere else. The time was late october '07... Maybe because this was the first class of the day and I was still dreaming....