Murari Sinha Poet Free verse

Life's many ups and downs

Life's many ups and downs

I
My entire day's earnings
are a morning,
a noon,
an afternoon,
and a night.
My name, too,
is terribly absent-minded.
Now and then
it forgets me
and goes riding
on someone else's shoulder.
I become
a nameless pickpocket,
travel to the land of the moon,
and open a school
to teach
the art of picking pockets.
The moon, meanwhile,
resigns from its job,
and takes to the streets
of the metropolis,
wandering from one road
to another
as an LIC agent.
Even the kangaroos
in the zoo
strangely enough
change
their surnames.

II
With no work to do,
I go and sit
beneath the banyan tree
in the middle of the field,
quietly,
watching
a few leafless trees
standing here and there,
their leaves shed
at winter's end.
The boro paddy
is being transplanted.
The hardworking people
are at work.
And overhead,
a flock of cormorants
flies across the sky.

III
Those who were
asking questions,
I put a bidi
between their lips,
one each.
Those who are
giving answers
have bidis
between their lips now, too.
All around,
there is only
the smoke
of bidis.
Some people
cough
a little.

IV
When I walk
down the stairs,
my eyes
look downward.
When I walk
up the stairs,
my eyes
look up.
Up and down,
down and up,
in the story of a life
stitched together
by a staircase,
a house lizard
calls out.

V
All day long,
that odd,
irritating
crying of a child.
Are you getting
annoyed?
The walls
of the room,
the ceiling fan,
the furniture,
all of them
are looking
at you.

VI
Life's many
ups and downs
need not
get under your skin.
Keep some Boroline
with you,
and beneath
every wrong answer,
carve your own name.
Then let those answers
be carried away
by the southern wind.

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