Cracked mud.  Black trees.  Dead grasslands.

Vast lagoons reduced to puddles.

Jungle Babblers scuff  beside the pathways.

A few ducks dabble.

 

But I remember Bharatpur before,

in ‘89 - the wetlands shimmering.

A haunt of Sarus Crane and Painted Stork

where duck counts peaked in millions,

 

and how a young man stood here once,  bedazzled

by dancing cranes and diving snakebirds,

and coming home to England from his travels

resolved to make his life’s work

 

championing the miracles he’d found here.

Workaday problems sapped his will.

He faltered while the world got hot around him,

baking hard until,

 

determined to refresh the vision,  he,

dismissing talk of drought as madness,

returned.  To cracked mud.  Black trees.

Vast lagoons of sadness.