On the great Tibetan <br />salt route they meet me again <br /> <br />old forsaken friends... <br /> <br />On their faces <br />fatigue of a drunken sleep <br /> <br />their lives worn out, <br />their legs twisted, shaking <br /> <br />from carrying <br />illustrious flags of bleeding ascents. <br /> <br />Age long bells clinging <br />to them like festering wounds <br /> <br />beating notes <br />of a slavery modernism brings: <br /> <br />cartons of Iceberg, mineral water bottles, <br />solar heaters, Chinese tiles, tin cans, carom boards <br /> <br />sacks of rice <br />and iodized salt from the plains of Nepal Terai. <br /> <br />Butterflies of <br />the terraced fields know their names. <br /> <br />Singing brooks tempests <br />of their breathless climbs. <br /> <br />Traffic alert <br />and time-tested, they climb <br /> <br />carrying <br />dreams of posh peacocks <br /> <br />pamphlets <br />of a secret religious war <br /> <br />filth <br />of an ecologist's sterile semen <br /> <br />entire kitchen <br />for a cocktail party at the base camp <br /> <br />defunct development <br />agenda of guilty donors <br /> <br />the West's weird visions <br />lusting for an instant purge. <br /> <br />Stone steps <br />of the mountains embossed <br /> <br />on their drugged brains, <br />like lines of aborted love <br /> <br />scratched <br />on the historic rocks of waterspouts. <br /> <br />Starry skies <br />of the dozing valleys know <br /> <br />the ache <br />of their secret sweat. <br /> <br />Sunny days <br />along the crystal rivers <br /> <br />taste <br />of their bleeding eyes. <br /> <br />Greatest fiction <br />of the struggling lives lost, <br /> <br />like real mules <br />clattering their hooves on the flagstones, <br /> <br />in circling <br />the cruel grandeur <br /> <br />of blood thirsty <br />mule paths around the glacial of Annapurnas.<br /><br />Yuyutsu Sharma<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mules/
