Sun Seeker

I was waiting in the dark for dawn's first light 

For those bright beams of sunlight

That cuts through night's deathly grip

That pierce through the billowy black clouds 

Like Surya's divine chariot

Hauled by steads drunken with might and vigor 

Hammering the sky, harrowing the stillness

Turning the earth away to usher a new day

But night didn't take her leave

And I sat there waiting in the room's darkness 

And I waited for days sitting by the window 

And then I wandered for days through the town

Tapping at doors, rapping at windows, calling names

But no one came

It seemed that everyone was sound asleep

Cemented to their dreams as if in a divine tryst

I could hear them snoring, talking, walking 

In their dreams, I tried to wake them

But they pushed me away and I chose to walk alone

Soon, I was in a forest, deep, dense and haunting

And I came across a small dwelling in a small dale

There, around a campfire I saw men dancing and singing

I asked them if they knew when dawn would come 

And they told me that it would be quite soon

That the sun had refused to rise due to our depravity

That the darkness all about was our own reckoning

That the world had been subdued by absolute misery

By a despair so vast that in its maw 

Entire worlds would fit in and be crushed to time

But they told me that there was a way to usher dawn

To do away with all this dark, all this sorrow

They gave me a book and an emblem and laws to obey

They told me to never oppose, to never defy or transgress

And promised me that that moment was coming soon

And it all rested on us, on our own conscience

And I obeyed, never opposed, never defied or transgressed

But night didn't take her leave

So I left and didn't even bade them goodbye

And thus I wandered and wandered and wandered 

Until I left the forest and stumbled upon a castle

Inside, I met many men and women who welcomed me

They seemed to know a great deal about our predicament

In the castle was a great room surrounded by books

We read them endlessly and sat on our chairs and tables

And we talked and talked and talked and they 

Seemed to know a great deal about the darkness

About why it happened, how it happened, when it happened, 

How long it might last and where in the world it

Must have affected the most, I enjoyed a great deal

And I asked them when dawn would come and they 

Gave me a hundred ways that it could and again

We talked and talked and talked about the ways 

But night didn't take her leave

So I left and was too distraught to bade them farewell

Finally, I found the tallest mountain in the world

And I found many at its foot trying to climb it

To catch a glimpse of the sun

Perhaps far away in some distant horizon, rising but slowly

Therefore I decided to climb it too

Many stopped at the foot, many fell down a sheer slope

Many were lost in the forests, many eaten by beasts

Many broke their limbs, many went insane from the dark

And many were tired and chose to descend back to the foot

However, after many months of climbing and camping 

I did reach the tip of the world surrounded by clouds

But night didn't take her leave

And there was no sun, no stars, no moon, no sky

Just me and the utter blackness 

That echoed the defeat of my heart

I sat there and I cried and cried and cried

And after I had exhausted my tears, 

I realized that there never was a dawn to begin with

That the sun was just a myth, a dream that we believed in

That darkness was the true nature of the world

That misery was etched even into the flowing of the rivers

The rising of the mountains, the twittering of birds

I let the sun sink in the horizon of my heart

I embraced the night that benighted the country of my soul

I accepted the darkness and never sought the sun again.