"Hymn to the Eternal Waters" by Pragyan Parui
From the brooding womb of storm-clad clouds,
The silver veins of heaven spill,
A mother’s touch on parched earth’s brow,
A sword that cleaves the granite hill.
It whispers soft through lotus ponds,
Where moonbeams dance in hush of night,
Yet thunders down with war-god’s wrath,
To drown the stars, to shroud the light.
It gathers deep in quiet lakes,
Where swans drift white as drifting dreams,
Yet wrenches ships with howling jaws,
Where tempests lash the ocean’s seams.
It quells the thirst of newborn buds,
And nurses saplings, frail and small,
Yet with a single rising tide,
It turns proud cities into sprawl.
It slumbers deep in glacier halls,
A sculptor’s hand in ice and stone,
Then wakes in roaring avalanche,
To claim the peaks as shattered bone.
It crowns the sky in fleeting mists,
Soft fingers stroking mountain spires,
Yet swells to drown the valley’s breath,
When rivers swell with tempest fires.
Image Description: White water trickles over a rock outcropping and falls onto moss-covered stones. The water at the base of the waterfall is covered in a layer of fog. The cliff is alive with greenery.
Credit: Engin Akyurt / Pexels
It glides in secret cavern veins,
Cool tendrils through the earth’s embrace,
Yet rages forth in boiling springs,
That scald and sear with molten grace.
The fisherman who trusts its calm,
And casts his net in sapphire waves,
May find beneath its mirrored gaze,
A nameless fate in drowning graves.
The farmer bows in patient prayer,
To plead for rain on dusty loam,
Yet when the floodgates break the sky,
His fields dissolve, his crops are foam.
It waits in humble earthen jars,
And sings where temple fountains flow,
Yet topples kings and drowns their thrones,
When tidal curses overflow.
O ceaseless, shifting, boundless flood,
A healer’s hand, a tyrant’s might,
You carve the land, you cradle life,
And vanish traceless into night.
About the Author
Pragyan Parui is a high school student and a pediatric Crohn's patient. Congratulations to Pragyan for coming in second place in the September Flash Fiction and Poetry contest! You can read more of Pragyan's work on Neobook.
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