We wrote

Ill, hungry
naked, imprisoned...
sharp, stabbing instrument
the unheeded reality
of their existence, made
the poet’s heart bleed.

He crystallized the grief
of his soul in words
and set down in his verses
the abundance of his bitterness
that “my own brother
was no concern of mine”.

We also read
the delineated sense
of the poem-message
and thus we moulded our obligation,
permitting us for a moment to disturb
the tranquility of our self-complacency.

Later we wrote,
appropriately and generously,
“the least of these brethren”
on the pending, to be acted on,
what’s under review
and we changed topic…

For most of us, tomorrow
the routine of proper life
awaits us once again.
And for a few
the struggle for the moral perfection
is carried on…


6 March 2004