A winter's fog in Lucknow

Winter would bring with her

Strange allies at night

And December would fog

In willothe wisp white

The nightly shroud would mean 

No more need for guise

I could walk on my own 

Keeping back the lies

In that thick gasping fog

The halogens would still be strong

So many suns above

As if righting all the wrong

And beneath one of them

A fire oft would burn

A lonely soldier retired

Turning coal upon his urn

And I would wonder then

What days and nights he's seen

That he would find solace

In Lucknow far, serene

Once guardian perhaps of borders

Vanguards of a war,

If you could chat in all the mist 

He could even show a scar

Some talked of terror times

Assam, enemy at the gates

Others paramilitary guns

Elections in the states

Yet here they were, all of them

Trading guns for paper-pen

Assuring safety to us souls

In this scholars' den

That despite the winters' caprice fog

There's vigil in fighter eyes

That wayward souls like me could stray

And yet come back home more wise

Yet, on those winter walks in fog and mist

I would stare at them from far

And wonder of their loneliness 

Huddled on a star

These years have passed, I age as well

And when I wonder of those nights

Those aged sentries come to life

In their cinder sparkling lights

And I realise what made them sit

In thick the winter cold

Not loneliness but peace of mind

In the burdened age of old

To give back as they alway did

Despite the wheel of time

A new found purpose, though each of them

Were long past from their prime

 

That purpose, a querencia

Despite winter's loneliness

A bit of quiet and solitude too

Far from the mangled mess

And to remind sometimes to a Walker lone

Lost in winter's way

There' s refuge as well in the thick of fog

That brings home those astray ...

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Dedicated to all those ex-army service men who would stand guard in Lucknow and many more campuses through rain and sun, summer's storm and winter's fog