Amitabha Mukerjee
In this town where the sunsets are gray
And dense clouds of steam fog up the sky
Proud men in ties fight hard all day,
The mud hardening in the arteries all the time.
Is it quicksand? Is it cement?
Perhaps it is yearning merely a return to dust.
A heaviness descends on us at dusk,
When the parade has moved ahead
The smell of rain on hot earth,
And horse droppings sizzle on the sunbaked street
We open the scrolls the jesters were handing out
Suddenly the ink is splattered by a large drop
It blurs the message but we can still read -
We have conquered again.
Like Alexander on the banks of Indus,
We sit in the drizzle
Pondering what it is exactly that we conquered,
This farflung empire of minds and shadows,
From us little men on this little orb,
An empire far transcending and reaching into deepest universe,
These palaces and these concrete towers
How are these more than the mud? Does mud
Always return to mud, carrying in it the seeds of its own destruction?
We are but little men,
Trouble us not with these things,
We are busy yet conquering new realms,
Join us in the evenings as we sit
And the parade goes by
Celebrating yet another victory
And we waft in the aroma of the rain and the horsesweat and the
Victories yet to come.
We sit in the galleries,
All little men,
Drinking mud