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My shadow is growing larger,
Its umbilical cord is becoming invisible
And it is seen walking with giant steps
Encompassing the earth and heaven.
I watch it merge into a life-cloud,
Sink into the Milky Way.
A giant fish, leaping up and down,
Collides against the rim of a fleet
On an espionage mission.
Writing my name in darkness
In lettering of fire,
The idea crosses my mind -
My moment has come.
I close my eyes to pray.
Suddenly, lifted by a tide,
I become part of the longest current
Sweeping across the waters.
I feel I am on some other planet,
Transported by a light beam.
From within the life-cloud
Someone appears on the screen.
Jutting out from a crystal ball,
Making ‘V’ sign pointing north,
Suddenly I fall into a spell,
My shadow confronts me with a grin:
“Are you the one who have devastated
The land and the sea,
Spread pollution everywhere
Making the planet uninhabitable?”
I feel the poison enter my being—
My throat choked,
My voice lost,
My sight blurred.
“See this woolly, exquisitely wrought,
Silken layer of ozone
Showing up patches here and there.
Aren’t you the one who punctured it?”
The verve of the tone is electrifying,
The accumulated guilt of all my sins
Rises up in my fevered brain,
A heavy load weighs me down.
Other shadowy figures join in
Pointing their bayonets at me.
“O Gosh! I am ruined” I say to myself.
Then from the jury someone thunders:
“Aren’t you who enacted Chernobyl and Bhopal?
How long have you been in this life-killing trade?
Making poisonous gases for chemical war,
Exploding the atom and the nuclei
To unleash annihilation on earth
And the outer space,
To efface life from the cosmic womb?”
The scroll of my crimes is too long.
“Punishment for each one of them
Is eternal damnation” the jury thunders.
The nightmarish shadows swirl in my brain
And I taste the hellish pain.
I carry a time-bomb tied to my waist.
I feel like pushing the button
To outwit the insistent inquisition
But the fear of instant death restrains me.
I picture doomsday
Staring at me.
My whole cerebral mechanism,
Unable to bear the load,
Breaks down.
I suffer brain haemorrhage,
Go into a coma,
But they will not let me die;
In an instant they revive.
Again I am before the jury,
Dumbfounded,
Pleading guilty, unable to defend.
I hear a knock at the door.
The milkman wakes me up
From my nocturnal session
With the invisible jury.
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Yayati Madan G. Gandhi
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