An Ode To Freedom -I Poem by Aniruddha Pathak

God did give every soul unbound freedom,
But O Freedom thou hast proved slippery,
For, thou wert never meant to come all free,
Man has felt a strange comfort in prison—
Yea, cocoon-like secure behind the walls,
Thou O Freedom cometh with a stiff price
That, few daring souls are willing to pay.

Take that revolution in France,
Liberty's free air spreading everywhere,
The fort of prison broken open
And prisoners set free to breathe free air.
Some locked behind serving for life
And tied up with iron shackles
That had to be broken to set them free.

Yet lo, many returned to the prison—
They that were not used to freedom:
Where to go, what to do and what to eat,
Oh too much of bother to beat,
And hard to sleep with shackle-less no weight,
Life of freedom seemed no less a burden,
It came and went, in a moment undone!

Some prisoners asking for the shackles—
Without them scarce can we sleep fair,
Used are we to their weight weighing ‘pon us,
And this bright light too blinding be to bear,
Let us have all the darkness back,
Used are we to live life of lack,
Thanks but not quite; we'll go back to our cells.
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Ode (in blank verse)|11.07.2019|
Continued in Part II
Topic: freedom, liberation