Visiting Modernity

...

Your return was on a dark night,
when the fireflies of modernity
dotted the night
and it wasn't silent
because it was the night of today.

Your children were up
and blue and white flickers
scurried across their windows.

You passed by quietly
with your steps soft.
the streets were narrower you noticed
and the buildings straightened and shadowed
and the air was dirty and cheap.

The hair line of the earth had receded
and the underneath lay withering,
its ugliness fully exposed to the semi moon
which too seemed half hearted in its attempt.
or perhaps faded by the gray haze.

There were no stars,
but fireflies, measured in their height and distance,
refusing to move.
such precise fireflies you had never seen.

You noticed the silver bellied beasts that
purred smoke, gleaming sun rays out their eyes
as they sped by you, ruffling your hair.

You weren't sure whether to be awed or sickened,
for things has certainly changed;
you could tell by the blue and white flashes,
and the lack of idle eyes.

The trees too were different,
bare of branches and leaves,
naked and exposed,
straight and measured in their distance
like nature had never intended before.

The horizon held not mountains,
but buildings tall like arms
reaching toward the sky,
snatching away the stars.

Gray, you realized was your children’s colour.
they celebrated it, adorned their city and their lives
with this shimmering gray
pasted to their hands,
their roads,
spewing out of their homes,
chugging out of the beasts
they had befriended.

You decided not to speak
for white wax clung to their ears,
metal ran their blood,
and the blue and white flashes
stole their eyes till they
could see you no more.