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| Joel Robinson Photography source |
The shy kid* who
walked like a shadow
Was once a 13 year old groom
Butterflies never left his stomach yet his stony
words
Hit his child wife in their room
Squabbling kids!
The razor’s age he had trodden
Hacked and hardened his diffidence
The girmitias**
held him in esteem
And some with nonchalance
Hail the change!
His easy way was bizarre to the worldly men
Hanging a smirk on their face
Eyesore that he was needed to get rid of fast
To save the man’s own race
God
save the Man!
But the bullets targeted his chest to stop
that beat
Of the simple man
Red birds flew up from his bosom into the
void and his words
Were the silent sun
He is no more!
Mercenary killers still walk and I hear their
footsteps
In channels and paper
The red birds from the remote past bring me
the silent sun
And words dance and caper
Poets still live!
*Mahatma Gandhi
**girmitia was probably distorted form of ‘agreement’-workers who were
hired from India to work as bonded laborers in South Africa. They were deprived
of basic human rights. Gandhiji fought for them in SA.
Written
for Susan’s Midweek Motif: Social Goods @ Poets United
&
Shared with d'Verse Poetics
