Weaned away from motherly nativity
Was the child
Ferried to a terrain
People call it urban
He would learn sophistication
Said the ambitious father
On an upbeat note the nature’ nurse
Bid a farewell
His Kith and kins giggled
“Your ambition will be your hamartia”.
Does an ambition give in to a crowd?
A new trajectory for the young child
The first school bag, the first book
The fuzzy printed graphemes soon
Began to hold senses
His place of studies and rest
Was a small beetle shop
In quest of a place
Where peace prevails
A discovery did his eyes claim
A small local Library
With no serious upkeep
In his dystopian world
It was the only utopia
From newspapers to magazines
To newly bridal covers
To old tattered books
And their musty papery scent
Became his cocaine
There he lived
The histories of Civilizations
And more did he bleed reasonably of unreasoned wars
No more was he the Friday of Crusoe’s island
And like Joyce’s Dedalus
He transcended man-made nets
In him now inhabit Goethe and Gandhi, Hardy’s Tess and Coleridge’s Mariner
Its so happens
When he is not him, he is them
With holes in his trousers pockets
And no wallet he travelled
Aross the seas and mountains
In the symphony of tales
And rhytm of odes and ballads
Lost he became outrightly
Cried in the tragedies
Laughed in the comedies
Fact and fiction
And their pitch and toss
Sometimes scalded the heart
And the other time the face beamed
Who said he read them?
Nay, he felt the very skin and flesh
The deserts,seas islands,mountains
Streets , parks, fields
Heaven and hell
Wandered well
Onto the pale papers
How his unsorted growing up
fell at ease
In the murky world where
More than humanity, savagery reigns
©jeyforyou
wordsillumine 