Tapera Makadho

I remember the old days
When hunger cleaved clean
The entrails within,
Summer could pass without counting
...

Lend me your pen
Mighty and indelible is its ink
Mysterious, how it gives voice
To a dumb and blank page
...

Where light encounters wall
And fails to penetrate
I am the shadow
I bespeak of the light behind the wall
...

The stage was set
By the podium they packed
Waiting for the speech
That I would speak
...

They built them
Barbed wire beds to sleep on
And raised stone-pillar pillows,
They cuddled and kissed in the meadows
...

I dread to tread Montgomery street
Broken are the soles of my moccasins
I dread the shrapnel and the shards of time
Now scattered upon my once beloved
...

They waft and burn
Spreading wings by night
And by day disappear
Like flickering dreams
...

I have seen doors of steel
Doors you dare not knock
Doors that hurt the knocking knuckle
...

Before you fell trees
Take stock of their branch and stalk
Count the nests thereupon
Whether eyrie or of dove.
...

I sit on the shacky balcony of time
Entangled by the gossamer of its web
I count the tickling tinctures of its arm
I feel it's tentacles spreading to grope me
...

There go around whirlwinds
Whizzing in the willows
Whistling in the meadows
Whispering to the copses
...

There is no more ink
In my fountain pen
Left only is the stink
Of its blots.
...

O poet, how blessed you are,
You who have carved letters into words
And words into poems
With such precision and grace —
...

In the hush of dawn, Montgomery breathes anew,
A whisper in the wind, shadows passing through;
Silent footsteps echo on empty streets,
Carrying stories of those they once did meet —
...

Every city like Montgomery
Has a cobbler to mend soles;
Those broken on the walks of life,
Cracks stitched with hope and despair;
...

No more lilacs and roses on Montgomery,
Nor the chirping and chattering of birds —
Left only in stench, smog rising above,
Choking the memory of what once bloomed here;
...

They are no more vicious,
The dogs of Montgomery;
They snarl no more their teeth;
Teeth that arbitrarily mauled saints and kin;
...

I will not be gullible to your antics;
Left only are eyes bereft of a wink,
Hollow sockets that have never blinked,
Staring into a sun that scorns you.
...

Let it rain ashore
At sea though deluged
They are retreating from land
...