Walls Poem by Murali Sappa

Walls crop up, from time to time
Whenever a brash leader of a nation
Trumpets flawed false notion,
Or a zealot sows the seeds of hatred.

Misguided, blind-folded,
Fearing your very own shadows,
You build them all around you.
Callous, before you realize your fallacy
You are a prisoner of your own phobias.

Heeding to the magic pied-piper
You build them around your nation,
You build them across the rivers
That flow in, to guard your riches;

You build them to stifle the inlets
And block those wearing dreams on their sleeves.

Heading into a downward spiral of hatred
You tread a path of no return.
For a while, the stillborn dreams
Pileup in a heap around the borders;

But soon - the river meanders around the walls
Seeking new deltas to enrich;
Undeterred, the dreams blossom, flourish again
Fostered in the faraway, newer, fertile lands.

The prisoner that you are, You look around
In the middle of the smog filled barren lands;
Once a river, the empty canyon now
Stares at the towering walls;
Once a sprawling metropolis
Resigns to its fate, a necropolis.

Decades from now, A brave heart
May bring the walls crumbling down,
But the walls built in the heart
Leave you isolated for centuries more;

Walls have no favorite sides,
Walls will never be one-way roads;
The wall that you built around you
is nothing but your own tomb!