"Night, still"
Time is a breathless runner
whose footfalls switch days
into nights into days into floods
of rain of sunrays, into seasons...
We wake, now, from that long night
of ill omens, of lying on heaps of
siblings' bones, of eight-long tyrants,
of crocodiles nurtured by hewman flesh,
of mad dogs out-biting mad dogs.
We wake from a long night
of potent owl hoots
of violent dog barks and
of mournful cat mews
all interred by Time's shovels.
And the bard, like a vulture feasting
on own child's carrion, seeks softstitutes
for the long night's symbols of vulture,
hyena, hawk, tiger, lion, fox or dragon,
fearing that the emptiness of the prison
cell will become the emptiness of his song.
Fear not, compagriots
there's enough carrion for your quills
enough woe to woo your nibs
even in this new day.
For, as I watch the sky,
I see an eclipse of the sun
and the pendulum swings still
between this dawn and that night
and out of the soil of this fresh pain
will grow a flower of phrases;
so we'll go still, sword of words in hand,
ears drunk with the unending moans
trumpeting to the world our plight
singing aloud our wounds still.
And we'll go still
wet-eyed, raiding the brigands' den
with stares of hate
with our swords of words
with our poisoned nibs of curses
we'll go, still
mourning our fatherland
where shrines and creeds
are the sands of stars
above the clouds,
yet taints and stains
are sands of ocean
beneath the skies;
where a rainfall in the plains
creates a flood on the hills
leaving the plains dry;
where the blind lead the sighted
and the bondsman
celebrates his bond-age;
where decomposing streets scream out
metaphor of pain, and the highways
sigh under the weight of hewman bones;
where the dregs of greed froth and frolic
at the bottom of our new gourd.
O, how hunger does its lethal rounds
in the bones of our people
taunting their taut ribs:
O, our ungoing wounds
Defying the going days,
defying the going seasons.
Four seasons after the long night
and, O, it's night, still.
Fear not, compagriots,
there's enough carrion for your quills
there's enough woe to woo your nibs.
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