Shiv Kumar Batalvi

23 July 1936 - 7 May 1973 / Punjab / British India

You Left

You left,
And grief cast its pall over me.
My pain condensed into a dropp
And rose into my eye.

For a great distance
My sight kissed your footprints,
Until the trail
Was swallowed by the dust of the road.

Before you left,
There was the bloom of your youth,
I turned around after you left
And every flower had wilted.

Since that day
I stopped speaking, I could not see.
My tongue was silenced
My sight turned to stone.

The pain that you gifted
To love,
Was the pain finally
That consumed ‘Shiv'.
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