My Country - My People: Modern Indian Epic - 8 Poem by Seshendra Sharma

Canto VI

You called me; but I would have any how come in search

of you even without your call, in quest of your voices-

Looking with my ears, with my eyes, with my skin,

with my nostrils.

Not one, but with all my senses,

searching in all directions of my country-

I came, not that I only know and you

don't know; but that we all shall walk in the

same direction hand in hand.

Not that we should all speak the same word

but that our word, shall not be a mere word

but a flame of light which will illumine

the paths of the people.

And that we shall realize it is within us

it is for this I am in search of you-

My friends my words and thoughts are countries

never tread by the feet of any man, my consciousness is a gypsy

who knows no boundaries familiar

to the antiquated history of mankind.

My footsteps are mighty wild lions that

sprawl in the dense forest unaware of fear-

I fight with flowers, I fight with gardens of flowers,

I fight with clouds, fight with fierce storms.

Fight I breath to live, my limbs know no submissive postures.

I am the solder of righteous indignation.

Truth is the volcano that explodes in my bosom.

truth is the fierce cataract that roars in my voice.

I burn my selfish body and flow like a river molten gold

in the highways of my nation.

Come with me..

Why fear? Be not afraid of yourself,

But be afraid for your country, for,

understand how great are the losses of your country

before your petty, personal ones.

How can you eat and sleep amidst

this colossal destruction?

You know my brothers,

I want new voices brimming with red red hot consciousness.

To make my own weapons and armoury,

to wipe out the tears of my nation.

You don't know perhaps but I know

there are mines of sulfur in your voices;

Every poem that you make is gun to fight,

and every line that you carry is a canon

to blow up the enemy

I bequeath my voice to my people; my

language breaths the oxygen of my nation

my country is the life of my art....

I am the prophet of blood!

In my country the leadership i mine,

I shall not let it go to politics-

Come, take up your arms, your poems,

come like armies, like storms, snatching your

thunderbolts which for an occasion you hid in the clouds-

* * * *

I am the tempestuous wind.

I have come to distribute to you unrest,

I am shouting to chase away oppression from the earth.

come my people to chase away oppression from the earth.

to follow me, you must ruthlessly set aside the self

that clings to you, and become free.

Your voice should banish your own song and give

birth to the song of the people, just as the voice

of the sky hurls out its thunder.

You should join your wars with the wars of your country-

How much love after all does your small life require?

The earth will be inherited by the oppressed; come let us excavate

our dawn, buried deep in this land.

Come my people take up your ploughs.

come with your women, your children.

Come out of your hearths and homes,

from prisons of your schools and offices,

your academies and assemblies.

Come let us see centuries blown off in the winds of time.

Come, walk with me through the villages towns and cities.

Flow like floods, roar like floods through all the

streets and highways of our nation.

Look at the graves in our fields, in our

forests, in our hills, in our walls and halls where

they buried our dawn!

Come take up your ploughs brothers.

throw off your books my children, let us suck the life-breath

out of those swines who buried our dawn,

and made us slaves in our own country.

Let us search, in the earth for the footsteps

of those millions who embraced suffering while building

edifices of happiness in the fields of mankind.

come let us plough and tear the earth.

let us pick the millions of dumb voices that stumble

across our plough.

Let us unfurl this red desire and walk ahead.

Let us discover in the journey that

man has no death and life never dies;

Come friends, there is a distance to go,

come breaking your selfish walls.

Let us bathe in the epic waves of the people,

Let us e washed off to the shores of the new world,

come let us go-

* * * *

Do you know that there is hunger?

Do you know that there is thirst and that the two

are the most cruel animals that live on the flesh of

your precious freedom?

I have come to you, as the voice of the whole nation,

To tell you that if you want to escape from their clutches

and also your generation along with you

then reject the dolls and picture books that

your father gets you. Ask him to get you fields and factories.

And tell him, they are the toys which you like.

If your father cannot get them for you,

let all the fathers of the country unite.

My children, when you go to the colleges

do you know the fields look at you with tearful eyes.

They ask, "why always this futile procession of books

in the roads of this country? what good after all

did they do to this land? "

you go into walls of the colleges, from there

into the walls from which nobody ever returned.

Then, when did you live I want to know!

Then generation of your father did the same

leaving that very question as their legacy to you, their sons...

When you walk past holding your slates and books,

to my eyes, you look like child-christs each carrying his cross.

Rise, my child, rise from your childhood.

Cast away your books, take up your plough, break the old chains

and run to the voice of the fields.

Bid goodbye to the old roads.

Listen to me, I bestow on you the great gift

of my ferocious fire, which like a miser, I,

carefully saved in my heart. Burn this rubbish

of the old and create a new world of your own.

Roar like the hoary winds, and announce that

you have not come to merely eat and breathe

and then lay down your breath and simply leave;

That you are those giant fires that left the forest lands,

that you are the mighty seas which broke their bund.

This moment in history climbs my peaks and calls!

My journey turns into a drop of sweat

and stands upon my brow now!

I bequeath to you this truth with the signature of my blood.

Freedom is the first breath of man;

That is the living language of your blood and

it shall be your sole desire to retain it until

you lift your last foot-step from this earth.

Fields alone are your schools; rivers, clouds, sunrises

and sunsets are your teachers; wholeheartedly surrender

to their language. Accept the discipline they impose.

Fields grant you the gift of freedom,

They present you the happiness of breathing in complete

relaxation. they give you an enormous plateau like chest,

legs of hard iron; a pair of eyes that spit fire of self respect

and a head held erect like a mountain top.

come! lay yourself at the feet of your new teachers.

Walk with courage, this country is yours-