We Wait and Watch

Dr. R. Rabindranath Menon

There’s light at the end of it all
we call the tunnel, though it’s not
one, for we live, don’t we in the open?

Perhaps we live in a tunnel unseen
because it’s too large and crowded, keen
not to see, and the light Not yet lit.

Hope’s a candle we light in our heart
when darkness envelops, and we see
a worse night at which we certainly smart.

Wishful thinking tends to wash off,
but failed hopes remain to scoff
lack of effort by others, in a huff.

What else you say when you see a State
where, not a people, but a river is in spate
to subdue the wrong most of us hate?

Sure, one fall leads to another;
did it begin with earth-shaking falls
of trees? Now within air-conditioned halls
crime cocks a snook. The situation galls.

The power of evil is levered by its sight
that good men seldom win a fight
and neither Gita nor conscience sets things right.

Case-sheeters queue up for kingships now
and conduct flag-marches where somehow
the army argues lawfully to lie low.

Are there deeper bottoms to touch
before the good can coalesce to fetch
a just God to redeem? We wait and watch.