Heroism

As in a film, this talk of freedom,

freedom from want, social injustice and greed,

poised above the bleeding heartland,

fields stretching orange, white and green.

For afterwards,

there will be no sacred relic of democracy,

neither the confusion of concrete and glass

nor tragic nightmare,

no first or last days of human love,

no vanity of victory entering the face

of some one-eyed paranoid man.

All our thousands of hands

that reached out to the sky

sulk in small strips of black cloth

of futile protest on our chests.

And I, writing my poem again,

what do I remember of faith and past hopes?

Mine was the generation that paid homage

to Gandhi and Tagore, saw in my mother

the stare of Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor.

It was the end of the war,

the beginning of the curse of beggardom.

Prophets preached the mysteries of a new kingdom.

Today, when I participate in group discussions

or scour the newspapers every day with urgency,

the words I read and hear

seem simply to walk the globe together,

holding hands and telling stories -

But no truth comes down to the street.

No believer has given up his life for freedom.

There is merely caution in those words,

weak sentiment, and history

in which the country's leaders like to drown.

Never before had I been near enough

the danger a word carried

to appreciate its monstrosity.

The sky is not my freedom of speech.

Only a police jeep cruises by, as in a film,

with the grinning officer waving at me.

Everyone in our street knows him;

there is nothing he can ever do wrong.