Hiraeth

A poem by Achuthan Panikath

Mon Mar 30 2026

Three days out, I saw the smoke.
The white thread climbed this dry blue noon,
A sign of life I'd yearned for long;
I just might hear a voice again.

My father had the nerve to press:
"You'll make no sense of this grey world."
That night I packed my wits and dreams,
A whispered promise; widowed fears.

I had no map, just a North-less word —
'Home,' no more the one of birth,
nor yet, I prayed, the one of death.
The road was where I had to live.

My home has mangoes in the air,
Rain tracing streams round tulsi leaves.
My dogs unchained to simply be,
I dance to the beat of that broken fan.

Three days I'd feared the hour I'd reach;
What would I feel, in my home of dreams?
What if it's all that it's meant to be —
Too good to ever leave again?

Past the turn, I saw the door:
a wage for the road, for the pain endured,
a salve for a mind in ruins.
I turn the knob; it needs no key.

And there, beyond the blinding dark
Lay wilderness; untouched, majestic.
Trees kissed the stars, and deep among them —
once again, the smoke.

I ran to a second door, sweeter than last,
A hopeful tryst with a hopeless cheat.
A third beyond it, the story unchanged.
Ran. Opened. Saw. Despaired.

I sense a home that feels too far,
A secret I'm yet to fully earn.
Like love she lives: felt, not touched.
I'm homesick now for a home I don't know;
The one I'd left feels stranger still.

As water finds its way to fall,
the wisdom of hiraeth comes crashing down:
My home may live in the deepest grey,
And forever for it I will hunt the world.