The year is ending,
But time carries on.
As do madness and cupidity.
Our calendered demarcations
Do not part our viciousness
From our viciousness.
Come the “new year,”
We will continue to despoil
The earth and trample
The lives of billions
To whom calendars mean nothing.
The seas will rise,
The forests will burn,
But our Manhattans will
Not heed the call of doom.
The Pharoas of the day
Will pile more meat on
Banquet tables, more bombs
In armouries, more profits
In banks, more laws to crush
The underdog.
But the Covids will come
And the vaccines will run out.
The year-end but hastens us
To the last point of another earth
Era, and no chip we invent
Will do anything but further
Our descent in a relentless motion
To the bottom of the ocean.
What remains will once again
Return to creatures of the wild.
Almanacs and calendars, God
And Darwin would have all died.
May be some mad Lear atop
An undersea cliff will remain to
Shake his locks and sing praises
To the bards whose relegation
Through the ages would he declaim
As having brought the blue globe to shards.
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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