A poem with a global sweep, depicting the woes of the marginalised and the depressed classes, by Kabir, for Different Truths.
Hear a story from a Black American
Hear a story from a Black American
Expressing his history with essence of Durban
Someday that story would be a cover picture
On the departure of a racist power
Listen to a conversation and be its follower
Between a Gulag and a Gas chamber survivor
World would shape itself before you again
Having you as the only healer of its devilish pain
Take your guitar and play with that old fellow
Who saw what Nagasaki is about to swallow
Rich people won’t be rich to you anymore
Feel the Buddha breathe in his pure folklore
Sit beneath a dome in the mosques of Turkey
Travel around the fallen Ottoman history
Listen to the Azaan and be a lost Sufi
Touch the dead and seek for every query
Track across the unbeaten mountains
Reach to its tail at the magical Eastern fountains
Spend the winter in the army ruled Arunachal
Talk to the scared women to gift them the best Kajal
Stand by the fighting mothers
Lose everything you have in uncountable numbers
Promise them that you would give the letters
Which they wrote for their sons with tears
Surf across the Bay of Bengal and get tired
Rest on the land which has been barb wired
Listen to the unbroken Adivasis about their eras
To speak about why they still worship Asuras!
Pen down a diary on the manual scavengers
Imagine without them how would have been our rivers
Hear what they have to say to the world
For the best of their stories would fly like a bird
Walk over a Brahmin dominated estate
Rip their texts when they speak on how they dictate
Take the pages to burn before the Dalits
Let them win for forever to defeat all their defeats
Sell all the banned books to rewrite history
Be the criminal who reveals all the forgotten bigotry
At the end, make all of them be around one last time
To die before them after an error free sublime
.
©Kabir Deb
Photo from the Internet
#Poem #Literature #marginalisedclass #Poemforthedepressed