At Last...!

This Year!
This drop of a tear...
From the eyes of the dwindling Time
At last, has dropped and soaked away
Into the fringes of the grey Past!

This year...
This cruel, callous and indifferent year,
While pausing, passing and vanishing
Has given us a parting kick
By making every bit clear!
The halo now disappear
The hollowness of the mirage, now appear
Quite crystal clear!
But the ‘eyes’ do not reappear!

Were it one or two or a few score
We’d somehow tide it o’er
But it’s a chain of weak and rusty links
Trouble writ large on small, crooked rings.

Stretched tight to the mirage
If storms and swarms of accidents
Vie with one another
Over this sun-baked and roasted skin,
One is bound to gape around and grin,
And pretend to say, “It does’nt matter!”

These somersaults of months and years
Were enough to tell us:
“This is not death’s dream kingdom.
Here the friends ‘show’ and only ‘appear’!
All appearances.

Those–the holders of the Present
And the Masters of the Future
The touts and the tomtoms
Themselves oppose the evolution!
When it means the inside!
When it demands the insecticide!

Hope that stumbled over these eight years
Swinging between life and death
Sees now the same fly-and-gnat business!
The stunted blossoms shed the same cold tears
Over the Autumn eternal–overlapping!
The ‘parrot’ is there–‘hanging’.

If this be the colour and scent of the garment of spring
If this is how beauty smiles;
If this be the climax of prosperity;
If this be the payment for sincerity,
And this is the result of unstinted love;
If this is the message of the silent lips
And this is the meaning of the shouting tongue;
If this is what the morning shows
The aftermath of our struggle–the convulsion, the revolution!

The barrel increasingly burns and boils with bitterness
At our drunkenness, ending in nightmares!
–M. A. BARI