La Galaxia de Estrellas

This is what my friend Ashwin wrote for a poetry writing competition. The time alloted was 60 minutes.

TOPIC: A prisoner is abandoned in the middle of a sparsely inhabited desert. He sees a falcon in the sky flying towards the North. He follows its motion...

On my back, I lay, heat penetrating through skin
Scorching sun, burning sand and blinding light, which to torture seemed akin.
Motionless, as if in a stupor, spreadeagled across, abandoned and bare,
To rise and walk, enduring the Satanic rage of the Sun, would I dare?

A slave - now, prisoner by War,
Atrocities on me have left many a scar,
Scars that evidently will fade not until death,
But, too stolid and stunned have I become to fume or fret.

It was, then, that I felt passing over me the shadow of a Falcon,
Regal wings spread wide - it had the appearance of a beacon.
I followed it with my eyes and then, on my legs as it flew towards the North,
With an enkindled flame I walked, overshadowing the solar wrath.

Sweat running down sinews, I traversed the sands, bearing binding rope burns with which I was scarred,
Then, realisation dawned that I was only human - with the passage of time, senses seemed to retard.
On the threshold of losing all hope for survival, manifested before me an oasis,
In the Land of no Man, the body of blue seemed like heavenly bliss.

Was it only a Mirage - false like people in life where the virtual seemed so real?
Preparing for the worst and hoping for the best, I advanced upon it with a new-born zeal.

Was this where I was destined to find my road to freedom - only Time would tell.
Would the last sound I hear be that of pleasant music or that of a Knell?

The tragedy here is that he did not win a prize for this!!!!!!! I can only imagine how good the judge was in poetry.