AT
LAST...!
This Year!
This drop of a tear...
From the eyes of the
dwindling Time
At last, has dropped and
soaked away
Into the fringes of the
grey Past!
This year...
This cruel, callous and
indifferent year,
While pausing, passing
and vanishing
Has given us a parting
kick
By making every bit
clear!
The halo now disappear
The hollowness of the
mirage, now appear
Quite crystal clear!
But the ‘eyes’ do not
reappear!
Were it one or two or a
few score
We’d somehow tide it
o’er
But it’s a chain of weak
and rusty links
Trouble writ large on
small, crooked rings.
Stretched tight to the
mirage
If storms and swarms of
accidents
Vie with one another
Over this sun-baked and
roasted skin,
One is bound to gape
around and grin,
And pretend to say, “It
does’nt matter!”
These somersaults of
months and years
Were enough to tell us:
“This is not death’s
dream kingdom.
Here the friends ‘show’
and only ‘appear’!
All appearances.
Those–the holders of the
Present
And the Masters of the
Future
The touts and the
tomtoms
Themselves oppose the
evolution!
When it means the
inside!
When it demands the
insecticide!
Hope that stumbled over
these eight years
Swinging between life
and death
Sees now the same
fly-and-gnat business!
The stunted blossoms
shed the same cold tears
Over the Autumn
eternal–overlapping!
The ‘parrot’ is
there–‘hanging’.
If this be the colour
and scent of the garment of spring
If this is how beauty
smiles;
If this be the climax of
prosperity;
If this be the payment
for sincerity,
And this is the result
of unstinted love;
If this is the message
of the silent lips
And this is the meaning
of the shouting tongue;
If this is what the
morning shows
The aftermath of our
struggle–the convulsion, the revolution!
The barrel increasingly
burns and boils with bitterness
At our drunkenness,
ending in nightmares!
–M. A. BARI