Beneath the Branches of a Century-An Elegy by Lalbagh

 

I, who cradle morning’s hush and the daily rush
Cradle footfalls slow with thought—
Watched as he stood, a hundred years,
In stillness vast, in battles fought.

Through summer’s blaze and monsoon’s hymn,
Through children’s laughter, lover’s pause—
He stood not just in root and limb,
But held within him deeper laws.

He knew what men forget to seek—
That strength is silent, not severe.
He bore the decades leaf by leaf,
A testament the wise revere.

Then came the rain—not cruel, not wrong—
But steady in its sacred rite.
And in that softened, sacred hour,
He leaned, and yielded to the night.

Not fallen—no—he simply bowed,
A monk returning to the ground.
The wind stood still, the soil aware,
As if the Earth had kissed a crown.

I did grieve,
But trees like him do not just die.
They pour themselves into the world—
Their breath becomes the open sky.

You’ll find him now in quiet ways—
In saplings born of loosened seed,
In roots that feel, in stones that warm,
In silence that the wise still read.

So pause awhile, walk soft today—
You walk through more than leaf and stem.
A century bent down to rest,
And gifted all he was to them.