Wake Asia Wake - Part One - 10

Your bombs and canons come late far too late now to put together your sundered arms no use crying robber in Kashmir when the poor hunger for a bowl of dusty gruel nor stretch your mighty legs over the Palk Straits to proclaim your integral faith Wake! India! Wake! There are no borders to the staunchly raised in unbending respect and unrelenting loyalty there is no need for police-ed borders for those who are tied to you by blood there’re only stretches of unfathomable water so much un-scaleable mountainous frights Wake! Asia! Wake! And draw your sons and daughters about you they who inherit your fate tell them not when they may act or how just let them gather around you with time if you wake up in time they’ll hoist you to Himalayan heights Wake! Now! Asia! Wake! Before It’s Too Late! © T.Wignesan 1996/2001 (Written between April 7th and 20th, 1996; revised February 2001 and published in The Asianists’ Asia, Vol. II, March 2001, and in T. Wignesan. Rama and Ravana at the Altar of Hanuman. Chennai : Institute of Asian Studies, 2006. [from the “original version” in the collection: longhand notes (a binding of poems), 1999]