Grief is not argued with or explained in this poem; it is floated away. Balachandran V puts the speaker on the sand bed of a forest stream and lets the water do the work of mourning. The central idea is that pain can be washed out of us by stillness and nature, but being cleansed is not the same as understanding. The last stanza admits as much. The note beneath the title, "Kallar, 10.03.2009", fixes the poem to a particular place and day, which suits its eye for physical detail.
The first four lines are a miniature story. The stream "grumbles" when a big rock forces it to "swerve sharply", then is "relieved" once it can "flow freely again" around the bend. The water is given moods, and only later do we see they are the speaker's. An obstacle, a forced turn and a release: the stream has outlined his recovery before he mentions himself.
Then the "I" arrives, and the syntax relaxes. "It swirls; over the sand bed the stream made / Where I lie in total stupor" runs on without a full stop, as though the sentence were being carried along. The stones "cradle me like a foetus in its womb", an image of safety and of starting over. The poem quickly punctures any solemnity, though. The speaker watches his toes "peeking out of the water" and his nose "like a periscope", and calls his body "this bloated corpulence" gently slapped by ripples. The self-mockery keeps the poem from sentimentality, and it shows a man already lighter than his grief. The periscope also plants an idea the ending will return to: a device for seeing from a low, hidden position.
The second stanza, only four lines, shuts down sight. The sun is "clouded out", the eyes close, and hearing takes over: "the chuckle of the stream / And the chirping of the Wagtail". The soft *ch* sounds make the water seem to laugh along with him. Naming the Wagtail rather than saying "a bird" gives the moment the feel of something actually observed.
The third stanza holds the emotional turn. "It was the time of goodbyes to the past" is in the past tense, as if the speaker were already looking back from the far side. He vows never again to "write poems / On love and the pain of losing it". The vow is odd, because he makes it inside a poem. The poem seems to be the last of its kind, or else a promise yet to be tested. Then comes the most startling image: "little fish nibble at my heart / Cleansing it of pus and blood." After the womb-like cradling this is raw. Heartbreak becomes an infected wound, and healing is tender but not pretty.
In the final stanza the speaker acts. "The sun turns up again", an echo of the stream flowing freely "again", and he turns over. Instead of lying face-up with closed eyes, he is face-down, "holding breath", looking at the pebbles. The effort has a risk in it. Yet what he finds is a paradox: "Though the water is clear / The river bed is blurred." Everything around him has been cleaned, but he still cannot see the bottom. I read this as an image of the past: the pain has gone, but its meaning has not come into focus. The repeated "I will, I will" sounds like a man persuading himself, and the poem ends on a promise ("one day") rather than a result.
The form supports this. There is no rhyme and no regular metre, only free verse in plain, conversational English. The stanzas run to twelve, four, seven and eight lines. The long first stanza has the looseness of flowing water, the short second one pauses, and the last is built from short, blunt statements like "I am unable to see."
The poem matters because of its honesty. Poems of healing often end in triumph, but this one ends with the riverbed still blurred and the speaker still willing to look. Its humour, its sensory detail and its refusal to claim too much make recovery feel believable.