Prayer

Let my Driving Force O’ Lord,
Not come from those who hold the whip
Let it come from the piteous face
Of her who hath but You and me.

Teach me how to feel the pain
Of those who suffer personal loss
Give the strength to stand upright
And fight the unjust whoever it be.

Let not the anger thrown at me
Mingle with my blood and breath
Make me not to spew it back
To spite those who are under me.

Let the Light of Reason rule
Let the Word of Law prevail
Let the Strong protect the Weak
Let Thy Will my actions be.

 

 

Knowing Oneself
Under the glare of a bright light
the tiny hair on the cheek
of the most beauteous girl,
or above her upper lip,
look like the wild growth along a village-canal.
And if it has been recently removed,
and assiduously, the petty holes it left
make of the soft skin a sieve stretched-out.
It is disenchanting to know that
what you feel towards her
is after all
essentially the same instinct
that makes a mouse jump over its female counterpart.

Knowing oneself is such a pain!

 

 

 

Seeds of Terrorism

[Note: This poem was written when I was in London, a fortnight after the blasts in the London Underground]
The hush-hush silence
Of a terrorism-battered London
Is broken by the sirens of police vans
Hardly anyone talks of it though.
Back home in India it would’ve been different.
In the trains, in buses and on pavements
New theories would’ve been given
“The problem is deeper than it seems,” or
“We’ve been more tolerant than we should.”
Here in London, no one speaks.
They only spread out the evening newspaper
And read the headline
Where the Scotland Yard declare
They’ll shoot more to kill.

The Seed of Terror is beginning to sprout.

 

 

 

Self-exploration
My mind produces nothing
except some meaningless jabber
spun out in tons like the palsied data
of a virus-infected computer.

Like dried-up rivers that produce
nothing except sticky worms
that crawl and make shallow dirty grooves,
and give not aught to the thirsty ocean,
the mind is dried of inspiration.

Nothing — just nothing— grows
on this barren field,
except the weeds that spite the wholesome air.

Is there still life
buried under the warmth
of the winter-snow?
Is there something left
of the glow that ignites
back into life the half-dead
remnants of a withering impulse?

IS THERE HOPE?

A Lesson for All
What shocks is not the hanging —
Being caught, he had no option anyway!
What has perturbed you
Even more than me
Is the bringing back of the Retribution Principle —
That Social Conscience must be calmed
By letting the Tyrant’s blood fall
Drop-by-drop before the Common Eye
And that this great “Milestone in Democracy”
Must carry loud and clear
The Lesson of Love to those
Who dare draw out
The Tyrant’s Sword against their fellowmen.