The Accusation
My friend ,
You have accused me
Of stealing the color from a butterfly
Of your town.
I tore out of some garden, you say,
A sapling of gulmohar
And planted it
In a desolate and barren cemetery.
Just as the coral tree
Has bitter roots,
So, in my heart,
Lies sin!
I am degenerate, immoral,
You have judged me to be vile!
I am well aquainted with pain and have deliberately
Made it my power.
I am a bird of prey and do not care
For the friendship of little birds.
My colors are false,
I am a dishonest dyer!
The inky serpent of fame
Lies around my neck
And strikes, with my songs,
Little heart-baskets!
My pain, like Ashwathaama’s
Is never-ending!
You remind me that my body-room
Will disintegrate soon enough.
In exchange for fragrant songs
I trade in wombs.
I am, you write
A very adolescent trader.
You say that a shadow
Is a child of light.
It is not the duty of a shadow
To separate.
The duty of a shadow is
Devotion to light.
In light, to always be ahead,
And to extinguish itself in light.
Even a bird can fly away
If is miserable in its cage.
But each day
I catch and discard new birds.
The reason I do this, you say, is that I covet just one thing,
The sorrow in my soul.
Because every song I sing,
Is a song of sorrow.
You also write
About one butterfly.
The butterfly who spent a short time
In my garden,
The butterfly with a weakness for,
Silver flowers,
The butterflywho desired,
Golden stars.
Her face was sweet,
Like the moon in a desert.
My songs
Were very dear to her.
You considered me
A son of Saraswati,
Today your opinion about me
Is altered!
At the end you have written
That I ought to be ashamed of myself!
That I should drown myself
In a tub of acid!
I should take my sick self -
Along with my songs -
And leave the environs
Of your town today!
Society has no need
Of my worthless sorrows!
I should be fighting for
The rights of workers!
I ought to disperse the color
Of my beloved
To the grain in the fields.
I ought to take the sorrow of the world,
And set it, like a jewel, in a ring of songs!
Copyright © Prabhjeet Singh | Year Posted 2016
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