Wake Asia Wake - Part One - 4

And remember the sun never really sets only on covetousness no greater co-prosperity sphere is there than inner contentment here the sun only rises and spreads its eyes in constant kindness Wake! Japan! Wake! O! Where have they all gone who drank deep and late Old Khayyam’s wine while with compass and rule he measured the rhymes of the skies and found the tulip-cheeked maiden wrapped round his earthen cup Wake! Old Persia! Wake! And still the venomous thunders flooding in the Tigris-Euphrates veins every minority has a right to his pride of place every dog his manger no monster bomb worth the sweetness of the four-stringed ruba’i Wake! Saddam! Wake! Let not the dust from streets settle on the rags of the by-standing beggar batten down the mud with stones and gravel with those very hands that culled the Ajanta Caves from the rocks of teeming wilderness Wake! O! India! Wake! See not how the chiselled rocks of Fathepur Sikri lie chipped in negligence nor how the hordes of monkeys romp on the fortifications in disdain see only the vision that shaped the mind of Akbar’s masons Wake! O! India! Wake! Scorn not the erstwhile brother now behind a frontier wall if your ways were just no brother would have sought cover siblings are no higher or lower born of the same mother Wake! Now India! Wake! Receive the bounteous waters that descend from the heavens confine and clean them in reservoirs in troughs or in buckets and make them pour forth in joy onto your children’s faces Wake! O! Asia! Wake! Wake! wake your neighbours also from the gonepast Rip-van-Winkle millennium it’s hardly enough just to keep going from day to day nor rely on the idea that no matter what It works India works Wake! O! India! Wake! (Continued in Part One - 5)