National Geographic

Splendor of ruins

Baalbek, Lebanon, Date Unknown (Photograph by George F. Mobley)

"Awe-inspiring even in ruin, the splendor of Baalbek [40 miles (64 kilometers) northeast of Beirut] must have defied description in its time of glory. Rome began erecting the huge sanctuaries in the first century A.D., on a site previously dedicated to the Canaanite god Baal."

(Text from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Lebanon: Little Bible Land in the Crossfire of History," February 1970, National Geographic magazine)

My Sunset

Here it comes

the lonely dusk of

one like the other days.

far and far

there stretched are

silences' sways..

dust swings its calmly gown

as it smiles down the earth

warm air swirls and roasts my dry heart

in its invisible hearth

paints my self ,brown.

and makes myself still more lonely

towards the night so lovely

to all hail & hearty

sorrow on my part.

As I watch the setting sun

poets admire

the red ball of fire

drippling down the rippling waters of Ganga

I see the same reflected inside self

huge ball of ire

slipping down the throat of my Shelf.

I get up on the sands

ready to go back

I feel the last shines

of the Gobblet

setting behind the pines.

My footsteps dim

& the horizon darkens

muting all the rhymes.

-Himadri

My Dream One Day

The whole world cries
outside me
saddens me all round.
My environs seem running to me
like a million roaring sounds.
I run here ,
and I run there
but no shelter was found
and I was torn to pieces
by a hoard of hungry hounds!
They tore apart
each limb and flesh
& I opened my eye:
Oh!
I was asleep
And had got up:
It was a dreams’ long bounce..


-Himadri