When chicanery blares from the crooked mouth
What does one turn to?
Especially during pandemic times
When no converse among the few
Who still throb to sanity
Remain imprisoned wall to wall,
When blinded age can no longer read,
When strangled passion buffets the soul?
The rage of music does of course
Suffice a dark instance of individual need,
But the billions now in wretched thrall
It has no wherewithal to feed.
Dead streets, dead parliaments,
Constitutions dead and gone,
Write imprecations to a world now dead
That it may be reborn.
And when a smiling dog wags a tail,
Be lifted by his cheerfulness
That he comprehends more than most
The need of an old man in distress.
There will be better times we know,
But what a human price we pay
For the sway of the hate-mongers,
And the cruelties of the day.
Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society. His columns on the Znet have a global following. Raina taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is the author of the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. He has several collections of poems and translations. His writings have appeared in nearly all major English dailies and journals in India.
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