ODE TO THE CHASM

They built the staircase to the moon,
a geometry of promise, clean and steep.
Each step, a polished, perfect rune
for a faith we were born to keep.

We live in the architecture of their maybe,
beneath the shadow of the climb,
watching feet on marble, steady,
marking a more privileged time.

Our sky is this: a square of blue,
a borrowed glimpse, a measured sight.
We calculate the light that filters through,
and practice silence through the night.

They speak of vistas, of the peak’s crisp air,
while we chart cracks upon the wall.
We trace the path of a sunbeam’s glare,
and learn the language of the fall.

But do not mistake our stillness for defeat,
this quiet is not made of stone.
It is the gathering of heat,
before the seed has fully grown.

For we are the architects of wait,
we, the scholars of the ground.
We know the hollow in the great stone gate,
and the most subversive sound.

It is not the shout that shakes the spire,
but the breath held, deep and low.
The turning of a deep, slow fire
that they will never get to know.

So let them have their height, their staged ascent.
Their moon is a prop, a painted sphere.
Our horizon is not heaven-sent;
it is built from being here.

Here, in the sure and solid dark,
where roots make their own design.
We are the question, the vital spark
that will outlast their rigid line.

And one day, this chasm they call a hall,
this beautiful, broken, gaping space,
will not seem like a wall at all,
but the world’s new, and honest, face.

By Sindhu Gatha