The Perspective

BY CYRIL MODAK

On the beach a child is playing

Saying. “In my hands I’ll scoop you up, O Sea!”

On the shore of worlds decaying

Straying comes a poet, “All your misery,

Tidal passion, pain, Humanity!

In my heart I’ll scoop and hold,” says he.

In a mansion’s shadows crumbling

Mumbling someone listens to the rapturous strain;

In the shadows of a rumbling

Tumbling Age a poet sets new words and plain

To humanity’s sad airs that stain

Towers of splendour built on human pain.

Workers in the slums are reeling

Stealing drinks to kindle life in weary bones;

In the gay world’s slums unfeeling

Dealing death to silence hunger’s strangled groans,

Stands a poet on the cobble stones,

Drinks humanity’s unhopeful moans.

Can he sit aloof rehearsing

Nursing vidual pin-pricks? While the millions wait

For their doom, can he enversing

Cursing private feuds his private tales relate?

For Lord Mammon’s Gala-day too late,

He must sing Man’s sadder truer fate.

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