The Soul

By Lt. Colonel A. N. S. MURTHI

(1)

Lay a baby-corpse on the road
In a ghastly pool of blood;
A heavily loaded rushing lorry
Had crushed its baby-body,
As mother and baby drove
For a meLa in a nearby grove
In a hand-drawn hansom;
Came this giant lorry and pounced upon them.
A minute ago the pretty baby lay
In its mother’s arms quite gay,
Divinely looking into her eyes
Making the mother rejoice.
Now it lay lifeless and dead;
Where now the baby-soul has fled?

(2)

A chicken coquettishly walked
And crowed and baulked,
As the farmer to catch it chased.
He caught it after, indeed, he had raced;
He clasped its legs and brought it to his wife,
With its head hanging and swinging for life.
She laid its neck on a chunk,
Severed its head from trunk,
Plucked its feathers and roasted it on the fire.
In glee the family, the farmer,
His wife, e'en his innocent big-eyed children
Ate the curried chicken.
An hour ago the fowl was alive on the lawn,
Where now could its soul have gone?

(3)

My faithful clock of many years,
Day in, day out, striking all the hours,
Which showed me, warned me the time,
Suddenly stopped its chime.
My winding it one night,
Try as much as I might,
To life could not bring it .
I took it to one who knew the knack,
Its working ways, its why and how.
Soon he set it right and now
It shows me the minute and the hour
As correct as ever before.
After it had stopp’d and ’fore its repair,
Where was its ‘life’–oh! where?

(4)

My radio with an eye
As good as a human eye,
Which a minute

In human voice sang or spoke,
Was silent–I’d turned it off completely;
It was as dead as dead could be.
I turned on its knob again;
Its magic eye glowed green again
I turned more knobs to tune
To where I wished, Leningrad or London
And lo! the music gushed,
Or the news I wanted rushed,
Hitting far off ethereal girth
Bouncing to earth.
It was again alive, my Radio!
Where was its ‘life’ a minute ago?