A harsh voice digs deep inside her head:
A woman’s cough
Trapped between the kitchen sink and the stove…
The sobbing wives of fishermen missing at sea
Clinging on to prayers
Lashed by waves of helplessness…
Guilt grabs you by the throat when you shut your eyes and see
Your ancestral home
Reduced to haunted bricks and stone…
The breathlessness of trees,
Doubled up in the storm,
Like the crying of a child at dawn …
Sparrows gasping helplessly in the smog
Of a city lost
In the hazy labyrinth of history …
When the songs of protest are casually suppressed,
Listen to the stifling silence
Between dictated sentences.
When your shadow is sound asleep,
Open the high windows within.
And let love breathe.
Yes, a whiff of love needed to soothe the whiplashes of nature and the silence of society. Hard hitting indeed.
Thank you,dear Santosh.
Marvellous!
The woes of unheard voices are hard to describe. You have done that with penchant.
Thank you,dear Nikhat.
An incisive and insightful work that the author delivers with customary aplomb.
Thanks a lot, Louis.
Wow! Reality checked with inimitable poetic way,