Waiting For That Poem Poem by Pankaj Prasoon

I am trying to write a poem
For the last ten years
But have not written a single word
The moment letters try to become a word
Some images emerge
Scuffle with them
Words and images
Images and words and cries emanating from within
Strange and familiar cries of
Farmers
Forest dwellers
Tribals-
Forcibly evicted
Smashed
ravaged
the cries of workers
helpless workers
crushed in the machines of the factories
…and then the letters jumble
…and the words start changing
And three hundred thousand farmers
three hundred thousand farmers-
killed themselves
To save themselves
From an infinite cobweb of exploitation by
The moneylenders
Banks
And the government!
The government formed by their votes
Their suicide change into numbers
The numbers change into insensitive data
Three hundred thousand persons
Human beings
Made of bones, marrow and muscles
Not different from any other living human being
Twenty six letters become insufficient to describe their agony
Words fail
And the poem does not start-
It wears shroud
Three hundred thousand shrouds
And the poem goes silent from carrying this burden
Meanwhile
The looters of the words
Start their game
The government has words
The filthy monstrous rich
Getting richer alongwith growing inflation
keep the purchased- words
in their safe -deposit box
workers, farmers, forest dwellers
fail to realize
the game of words
the trickery of words
the illusion of words
they don’t understand
they don’t recognise the words
they know and understand
only hard labour
their capital- only body!
they don’t know
where does it go
the blood and sweat they burn
day and night
in the boiling heat of factories and farms?
where does it close for ever in the dark chests
and secret coded lockers in unknown countries?
Poetry goes silent
Three hundred sixty five days
Twenty six letters
Fail to make any equation
They begin to see fearfully-
Singur, Nandigram, Jangalmahal
Dantewada, Gobindpur, Bhatta -Parsaul

And blood sucking Draculas ready in line to swallow
Their farmland, forest, hills…
They are hungry to capture farmland
- To sell high-rise buildings
They are hungry to plunder hills
- to rob stones and minerals
and make them Dadhichi * forcefully
They need forests
- to erect monstrous factories
on the corpse of dumb trees
Displacing the farmers and the tribal from their land
Their own land
Inherited from their ancestors
Forcing them out like wild animals
With baton-charging police
Chasing them out…
The poem is scared
It hides
Poor twenty six letters
-Run away
For fear of becoming a word
The poem is never made
It won’t be made
I would remain thinking about it only
With pen freeze in my hand
For the next ten years…
The poem would be written
When the farmers and the workers
Shedding their fear
Shedding their weakness
Unite
Pounce upon
And attack on their behemoth enemies
We would have to join them in that Great War
Coming out of our cogs
sitting on the fence won’t do
we would then emerge victorious
that will be the victory of the people
the real victory
a fight to the finish
the decisive battle
the oppressed humanity would win
looters would go away
never to return any more
the words would return
free from captivity
Letters and words
won’t remain imprisoned within the rogue data
their meaning would come out
the poem would come out spontaneously
effortlessly
that poem would be vibrant
and pulsating
Let us wait for that poem! !


*Dadhichi: a Hindu mythological sage who donated his bones to form vajra- an indestructible, super-strong weapon of Indra, the chief of Gods.