Tell me,
When the Chinars ignite, not with flame but with the slow conflagration of thought,
Do the mountains not avert their ancient gaze,
As though humbled by such eloquent surrender?
The Dal, in its mirror-like poise,
Seems to cradle the dying sun as one cradles an old truth,
Tenderly, reverently, and with the ache of comprehension.
What is beauty, if not decay ennobled by acceptance?
Each leaf descends, not as a victim of gravity,
But as a philosopher weary of permanence.
Scarlet, ochre, and gold, they fall like silent aphorisms
Upon the valley’s contemplative heart.
O autumn of Kashmir!
Thou art no mere season, but a metaphysical discourse,
A tranquil revelation whispered in the dialect of dusk.
The wind becomes a dialectician,
Interrogating the vanity of youth and the futility of bloom.
It asks, what merit has the perpetual,
When even impermanence can be divine?
Do you hear it, the sacramental stillness?
The brooks murmur in metaphors,
Their voices thickened by nostalgia.
The willows incline, not in lamentation,
but in homage, to the sanctity of decline.
And the air,
Ah, the air!
Crisp, crystalline, perfumed with the faint melancholy of smoke and saffron.
It inquires of the soul:
What within you can withstand the exquisite cruelty of change?
O Wular, O Dal,
You are not lakes but mirrors of the mind,
Each ripple is a syllogism, each shimmer is a question.
Beneath your tranquil veneer,
Does not the imprisoned sunlight strive to rise again,
As though even radiance cannot endure extinction without rebellion?
When herons ascend like forgotten verses
And Pampore’s saffron exhales its purple sigh upon the earth,
Is life not confessing, in its most articulate silence:
“I am ephemeral, therefore I am beautiful”?
Thus speaks autumn in Kashmir,
With an austere compassion that dismantles illusion.
It undresses the valley,
Leaving it clad only in truth’s transparent raiment.
And we, brief custodians of this transitory splendour,
Stand amid the falling leaves and call it eternity.
Yet perhaps,
When all leaves have fallen and all reflections fade,
The valley will awaken anew,
As though in the same moment, eternally rehearsed,
Returns in altered hue.
What if the circle is not punishment but perfection?
The cosmos breathing in and out its own remembrance?
To fall, to rise, to fall again,
Such is the will of the world,
And autumn, in its sublime candour, merely reminds us,
That nothing truly ends, it only returns refined.

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