THE DAWN
(A poem on the demise of the Socialist movement
in India)
the schoolboy
felt ecstatic.
“Some day,
sure, that Dawn would break”
he sang his
favourite bard’s line
for the
vanquished ones, the lost ones.
For fifty
years, vigil he kept
of the
nightly sky for divine symbols
but the
blessed Dawn eluded him.
Yet hope dies
not so easily.
Crusaders
perish. His poet dies.
Miseries pile
for the doubly cursed.
Their
advocates turn deaf and dumb.
Sold and
bought? Nobody knows.
Finally comes
the global sign.
Liberalised
guns booming at
the
vanquished ones, the lost ones.
No one comes
to rescue them.
The tired
man’s camera clicks
at the
eternal dark horizon.
Now is the
time to go to sleep
and learn to
forget poetic dream.