Ars longa, Vita brevis – Poem by Akshaya Pawaskar

Poetry by Akshaya Pawaskar

What survives? What endures?
For centuries they talk in
Familiar tongue
Through different mouths
The cave man with their parietal
To Dali with his surreal
To Vincent with his yellowed palette
Artists gather in one frame
Talk back, talk forth
Like a melting pot of evolution
They touch, they move
X marks the bottle from
Which they drink to
live forever
But they disintegrate
Like a necklace
Bead by bead
Until an empty string
Remains like
a gazelle looking only
at a ghost of itself
Unsmiling, mortal.
Except for
The etchings,
Black birds and wolves
from another lifetime.

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About the Poet

Akshaya Pawaskar is a doctor practicing in India and poetry is her passion. Her poems have been published in Tipton Poetry journal, Indian ruminations, Efiction India, The blue nib, The punch magazine, ink and voices, North of oxford, Awake in the world anthology by Riverfeet press and rock and Sling. She had been chosen as ‘Poet of the week’ on Poetry superhighway in 2016, finalist of Poetry matters project contest 2019 and second place winner of Blue nib
chapbook contest.