a time after this time in three languages

because I had not been intimate with death
I did not know all its names

I had to text a friend who teaches Hindi 

to ask if kaal, which means time 

is also an archaic word for death

and it is 

doesn't it make sense?

the passage of time means death

look at old photographs

their grainy flecks, the people 

disappearing before their time

how my mother will stay 

behind at the end of this year

And in Tamil kaal-am, which is time or season

is also the formal, euphemistic word for death

someone's season is over     they passed away       you can't find the vein. 

there's another kaal in Tamil, and that's toddy 

perhaps for someone who wants to get blackout drunk 

so they never have to remember grief

Kaal in Tamil also means stone or rock

or that which you turn into when death visits

they're gone and you are too

Or kaal can mean mountain, from where you can fall 

or where you may want to run away and never return.  

Kaal in Tamil and Telugu means legs

you could use those to run away (maybe to the mountain)

kaal-a in Telugu, though, is dream

yet another way you could run away 

and if you say it another way

kaal-a is art 

chitra-kaala is visual art

I don't know what art it is 

to foolishly repeat a word

watch it like a small plant 

inspect each tip and branch

until it begins to look strange

and loses meaning 

and almost becomes 

something that doesn't exist 

almost

_________________________

Note: The title comes from the lovely Nicole's comforting mantra ("there will be a time after this time") although I may have messed it up a bit by borrowing it for this rumination on the passage and polysemy of time. 

Pic: From the Lake Superior website ahead of the blizzard. 22-foot waves. To a non-native Midwesterner like me, it seems wild that you all are calling these seas "Lakes."