One
This city pushes all men
into a corner,
like a hoodlum.
It catches our collars
and lifts us
and holds us in the air,
like an insensitive hoodlum.
In its
obscene tongue
it whispers to our faces
that it will kill us for sure.
And timid,
helpless, weak men that we are,
we whimper like schoolchildren
cry in front of nasty, bullying boys.
Two
Like a cow tied down
to an unseen tree stump,
hidden by dark corners of this city,
I am also chained down by this city.
It seems that all the ropes
that should have been used
to tie down these wandering cattle
are used for tying me to this city.
My neck
and my nape
carry the wounds
I have incurred while
trying to break those ropes
with which I am tied down.
Three
Like the claws of eagles
keeping watch of this city
scratch open all its secrets
with their screeches
these auto-rickshaws
scrape away
even the remaining traces of
my silence.
Four
Sitting in this
closed room
I struggle to write
a desk haiku about spring birds.
At least with that
let me watch
what this city does not show me.
Five
Let me take a stroll
through this city’s dustless nights
and its roads, forever under construction.
Perhaps I can win back
my poetry which has been stolen, or lost.
Maybe I will find it
beside the inn after that corner
or maybe in the waste-bin
near that opulent shopping mall.
It is told
that this city has robbed
the sky off its stars once long back.
Now it has stolen my poetry
which I had secured beneath my chin.
