My Country - My People: Modern Indian Epic - 9 Poem by Seshendra Sharma

My Country - My People: Modern Indian Epic
Canto - - V1.....
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why should you have a heart if you cannot fill it with pains?

Why should you have those eyes if you cannot wet them with tears?

I cry each day a thousand times;

I realize my liberation when I merge with you.

You are my sea

I run

Only to flow into you from the clouds,

from the hills, from the forest from all directions of my country.

But look! I am the great flood rushing forward don't come

in my way. Don't try mean tricks on me,

To turn me into petty channels of utility,

Look at force of my wild fretting waters;

Your eyes will go into raptures.

Listen to the wrath in the roar of my voice;

Your ears will enjoy feasts of ecstasy.

Read the epic of my journey.....

Come, I shall roast your hearts on the flames of my language;

I shall show you your destination.

Like a brute I shall hew the society of Man,

as a tree is cleft by a thunderbolt.

I shall burn all my papers, I shall burst all my hills,

I shall paint the whole house of my body with pure blood.

and light all my windows with the lamps of wild voices;

I shall squeeze from my every nerve and donate all my light.

I shall bleed to the last drop and my whole energy

shall bear every fruit of the earth-

And then

I shall bask in the warmth of fulfillment that

I could give one flash of awakenment to my people.

* * * *

Do you know how the grain is coming?

Do you know who are tilling the land?

Do you know who makes the plough into

the life giving weapon of the tiller?

Do you know what power the earth possesses?

Know my friend, the creative powers of the earth.

In the flames, the iron is red hot, in the mid noon

the heart is wilting heavy blows of the hammer are falling

on the solid iron which is burning like the rising sun;

The steel armed heroes are blowing storms, burning old worlds

and recasting new ones in the smithy labour.

Those toiling multitudes of bygone days vanished into

the earth without a voice-

Call, my heroes, that voice back to life today.

Thunder, my heroes, that their bread should

be returned to them.

Resurrect the flaming humanity buried in

the dust of their bodies.

Furnaces are blazing in the eyes of oxen;

fury is raging on the forehead of the plough.

O sun, burn, burn yet more until all our

dark nights are vanquished forever-

* * * *

I am the tiller of this land, my head is full of fancy

that the grain of the land acquires legs,

and those legs acquire dreams of walking to

the homes of the hungry.

I till the land all day,

And then I sit at a distance;

Scanning with my eyes the immensity of

the land which I tilled,

Feeding the air with sighs, and watching the evening

which looks like a bended old laborer,

carrying sacks of gold upon his back.

I am mixed up with the earth. I grow

like the trees and the crops in the earth:

and live like fruit and grain in my country.

The whole day my hands are full of work

but by dawn my hands are empty, seeking work-

Like my companion the sun who works

the whole day to fill the sky with light, and again

the next day the sky is emptied to be refilled.

I coax the earth tenderly, and nurture the young crops,

feeding them affectionately, with soft and tasty,

soil made like butter with all the skills of my cultivated hands.

My body is the earth; both burn and thirst for water

in the seasons of summer when the sun is furious.

When the fat rain drop shining with flesh and blood

slips into the dry earth of my mind

a whole crowd of scented dreams wake up-

I am born out of a broken dream.

I bathe in the colours leaking from a broken rainbow.

My birds swim in the air, build houses in the branches,

and lay roads in the sky.

In the country of my dreams, I have only a hut.

I don't know why I must live in a zero!

All are going for harvesting the crops

pearls of desire are rumbling in my heart to join

the procession but my sickle is broken!

And there is no one to mend it in my beloved land-

* * * *

I am walking, walking past dark rows of huts, not lucky enough

To posses even the flicker of a wick.

My legs were chopped off, but I kept walking, treading the distance.

My hands were chopped off, but I kept on walking, sculpturing my dreams.

My tongue was chopped off but went on walking holding just silence.

I was flowing like flood into the sea.

I was blowing like mad wind into the sky

There was not even a candle of light in the cruel

And tearing darkness, to give me a handful of rays

I am walking in the rows of huts where

There are no men by day and there is no light at night.

I am walking-

Here, a child is leading a young calf to feed, having no food himself.

Where even childhood has to work to survive;

There my legs really got chopped off

My hands really dropped off

And my tongue fell dead

There, I am not the flood

There I am not the mad wind at

The feet of that child.

I poured all my tears at those feet. The necklace of pearls

That was swinging in my soul, snapped and fell

Fell at those feet, my poem turned aside her face and wept.

The poem said:

"I cannot come even if you invite me into

a heavenly dream from here

Where I am rooted forever"-