Do you know that there is hunger?
Do you know that there is thirst and that the two
are the most cruel animals that live on the flesh of
your precious freedom?
I have come to you, as the voice of the whole nation,
To tell you that if you want to escape from their clutches
and also your generation along with you
then reject the dolls and picture books that
your father gets you. Ask him to get you fields and factories.
And tell him, they are the toys which you like.
If your father cannot get them for you,
let all the fathers of the country unite.
My children, when you go to the colleges
do you know the fields look at you with tearful eyes.
They ask, "why always this futile procession of books
in the roads of this country? what good after all
did they do to this land?"
you go into walls of the colleges, from there
into the walls from which nobody ever returned.
Then, when did you live I want to know!
Then generation of your father did the same
leaving that very question as their legacy to you, their sons...
When you walk past holding your slates and books,
to my eyes, you look like child-christs each carrying his cross.
Rise, my child, rise from your childhood.
Cast away your books, take up your plough, break the old chains
and run to the voice of the fields.
Bid goodbye to the old roads.
Listen to me, I bestow on you the great gift
of my ferocious fire, which like a miser, I,
carefully saved in my heart. Burn this rubbish
of the old and create a new world of your own.
Roar like the hoary winds, and announce that
you have not come to merely eat and breathe
and then lay down your breath and simply leave;
That you are those giant fires that left the forest lands,
that you are the mighty seas which broke their bund.
This moment in history climbs my peaks and calls!
My journey turns into a drop of sweat
and stands upon my brow now!
I bequeath to you this truth with the signature of my blood.
Freedom is the first breath of man;
That is the living language of your blood and
it shall be your sole desire to retain it until
you lift your last foot-step from this earth.
Fields alone are your schools; rivers, clouds, sunrises
and sunsets are your teachers; wholeheartedly surrender
to their language. Accept the discipline they impose.
Fields grant you the gift of freedom,
They present you the happiness of breathing in complete
relaxation. they give you an enormous plateau like chest,
legs of hard iron; a pair of eyes that spit fire of self respect
and a head held erect like a mountain top.
come! lay yourself at the feet of your new teachers.
Walk with courage, the country is yours-
* * * *
why should you have a heart if you cannot fill it with pains?
Why should you have those eyes if you cannot wet them with tears?
I cry each day a thousand times;
I realize my liberation when I merge with you.
You are my sea
I run
Only to flow into you from the clouds,
from the hills, from the forest from all directions of my country.
But look! I am the great flood rushing forward don't come
in my way. Don't try mean tricks on me,
To turn me into petty channels of utility,
Look at force of my wild fretting waters;
Your eyes will go into raptures.
Listen to the wrath in the roar of my voice;
Your ears will enjoy feasts of ecstasy.
Read the epic of my journey.....
Come, I shall roast your hearts on the flames of my language;
I shall show you your destination.
Like a brute I shall hew the society of Man,
as a tree is cleft by a thunderbolt.
I shall burn all my papers, I shall burst all my hills,
I shall paint the whole house of my body with pure blood.
and light all my windows with the lamps of wild voices;
I shall squeeze from my every nerve and donate all my light.
I shall bleed to the last drop and my whole energy
shall bear every fruit of the earth-
And then
I shall bask in the warmth of fulfillment that
I could give one flash of awakenment to my people.
* * * *
Do you know how the grain is coming?
Do you know who are tilling the land?
Do you know who makes the plough into
the life giving weapon of the tiller?
Do you know what power the earth possesses?
Know my friend, the creative powers of the earth.
In the flames, the iron is red hot, in the mid noon
the heart is wilting heavy blows of the hammer are falling
on the solid iron which is burning like the rising sun;
The steel armed heroes are blowing storms, burning old worlds
and recasting new ones in the smithy labour.
Those toiling multitudes of bygone days vanished into
the earth without a voice-
Call, my heroes, that voice back to life today.
Thunder, my heroes, that their bread should
be returned to them.
Resurrect the flaming humanity buried in
the dust of their bodies.
Furnaces are blazing in the eyes of oxen;
fury is raging on the forehead of the plough.
O sun, burn, burn yet more until all our
dark nights are vanquished forever-
Do You Know Hunger ?
Seshendra Sharma
(C) All Rights Reserved. Poem Submitted on 04/07/2020
(1)
Poem topics: alone, away, childhood, children, courage, dark, epic, friend, happiness, history, house, people, power, red, respect, sea, today, tree, truth, world, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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