KEY OF THE KINGDOM
R. R. Menon
Here is the
key to the kingdom come
where
kingship is a denial’s outcome
from the
felt present’s familiar hum.
Hence it so
happens that the takers
are fewer,
even these rear ‘undertakers’
acquire a
funereal overtone, and a glow
other-worldly
with worldly hunger in tow.
With the
present therefore out of step
are most of
us, because the road map
of how to
have the cake and not eat it,
differs
widely from sacred wit to wit
of a
revered messiah turning up,
while
storms go on brewing in our tea-cup.
Refuse the
facts that stare you in the face
to regale
the future with denial’s pace?
Religions
work out methods to have
the best of
both worlds in earth’s cave.
Instant
remedies for a life of sin
are easy
ways to secure a win
with least
effort, with life after death
fulfilling
each desire in the thought’s breath.
When
principles die, their ghosts reach out
with
vengeful hands for a double harvest
of the
sinner and the sinned against
in a dare-devil
democracy’s power-thirst.
Reasons
picked from the decaying hay-stalk
of recorded
history do fortify the talk
that buries
the facts, and them exhumes
to settle
down with individual resumes.
The rebel
also revels in rakish dreams
to feel the
present’s pain-soaked screams.
Between the
world born and the one yet unborn,
man finds
the key to a kingdom all his own