By Prantik Banerjee
When a city burns,
a poem often gets booked.
Slapped by an F.I.R.,
it is handcuffed
its unruly words locked up
on charges of sedition, treason,
or any such stately reason.
But it’s got spine-
standing alone, it defies prison and fine.
When the city keeps burning
even after the fires are doused
and the rubble is cleared,
and the streets breathe smoke
from charred bodies and gutted shops,
a few words manage to slip
through the iron bars of
muzzled voices and murdered hopes.
When the city is burnt,
a poem’s syllables
sometimes cry in anguish,
sometimes smoulder in anger.
They refuse to die,
speaking out things unspeakable
about how the mullah’s call
and the pandit’s chant
made decades-old neighbors slice
each other’s throats on curfewed nights.
Sometimes you may see
widowed words, bereft of meaning,
wailing on thresholds
where faith no longer kneels and heals.
When the city is dead,
a poem still survives
though knifed by the mob
and tortured by the police.
A poem
always lives to stand alone