Shackles Poem by Praveen Kumar In Shobha Priya

Man is in shackles everywhere,
Within, without, near and afar;
Man is in strife and constant fear
Of own, of men, of the present and future.


He is a lonely fly
Caught in an intricate web;
He forces his pace,
Wings shut, Will whittled,
With doom in perpetual wait
At left, right, up and down;
In mysterious zigzag puzzles,
In crossroads
With no signboards anywhere,
But wrong signals
Of frailties and deceptions;
He pursues his path
Of rise and fall
In blinkers.


No choice but to follow, what all must,
Smell chances and pursue instinct
In disguised bondage of the unknown fate,
What makes man unliberated and mute.


Fences, walls and trenches outside
Stunt and shock the quietude of the walk;
Ropes, smokes and darkness inside
Halt the spurs to run ariot to miles;
The war is afoot
To straff and kill free instinct,
The field is riven with smoke screens
That make indistinct inner sight.


The world is wide, but nowhere to go,
Roads are many, but barricades, everywhere;
The nature is bountiful, but little is to choose,
Man is free like a bird, yet, unsure how to fly.


Men create barriers,
Men fight each other;
They raise dust-storms
That blind the world
And leave back disorder,
Where freedom is swept away
And all is in bad shackles
Of fear, jealous, anger and hate,
Of greed, arrogance and indifference;
Each is a shackle
And the world is a bundle of bad shackles,
Where each is against all,
And all, against each.


This is how we live in the world!
This is how we safeguard us!
Each makes this world less free for all,
To make the world more free for him.