Discovering God. Poem by Ananya Guha

In all those harangues about life, politics, caste and death
there is a logic. We have to justify the intellect and existence.
We have to eke out a way of living, intellectual, creative.
It is not only writing, it is also talking.
Today a man is bludgeoned to death, because of wrong ideology.
No one fears the ghost. One life taken, cannot be given.
The internet will burgeon. There will be meetings, protsests
and slogans, till one day we are tired of ideologues and rogues.

If we take to the streets armed with poems, the poem will not speak.
What will, is rabid hatred. The here, there and now.
In an imoverished country, what else can we do?
Who will listen?
The man on the street pushing the tenacious cart does not know
who is killed and for what.We know, and we know how seeds of malfeasance have been thrown, scattering ashes in drowning water.

Let's pause for some breathless surprise. Suppose a mosque is shattered, the temple will have breathing space in colours. Suppose
inevitably suppose we have all religions in one, then the spaces
will move away into a cauldron of one in many, many in one.
We must have one, the leader says. First eradicate poverty
but in doing that let a corporate structure capture imagination
of doting people.We need to show, show the West. We are the East.

Intellectuals sporting beards must show the way.
The way to doom and blood. They can do it. We must follow
voices, and an ancient culture, waiting to be beheaded.

Don't panic. Mine is not a dirge. My voice is not funereal.
I am only trying to look at rationales, and why people are despised
amidst cosmopolitanism. They were iconoclasts, someone say.
Some don't. They keep quiet, and wait for the whistling wind
to discover God.