So Very Far by Gajanan Madhav Muktibodhav

 Those who are unable to find this poem online. Here it is.

Asian Literature (LIT 203)

November 27, 2014 Modern Indian Literature: So Very Far by Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh

So Very Far

I am so very far from you people,

My fires are so very different from yours,

That what's poison for you is food for me.

Multitudes walk with me in my isolation;

In my loneliness, friendly hands

Of those you despise, but caught

By my troubled soul and held precious there.

And that's why you rain your blows on me

In public and in private.

(Leaves of our blood-stained epics fly

In our fight.)

I covered myself with failure's trash,

Finding heaps on the spiral staircase

Of corruption and cash,

And though I've gone straight

I'm still bitter in what I do, hate

The poison

For whatever one has one wants something better,

To sweep the whole world clean you need a

scavenger

And I'm not him.

And though someone inside me roars each day

That no work is unclean if the man be true,

The work's still grim.

Beyond the world and its end-products:

Refrigerators, vitamins, radiograms,

There's my famished daughter.

In her intestines a gnawing nothing,

In her lungs the  shame of those who have nothing.

Only suffering imprisoned by the nothings is true,

All else is unreal, untrue, a delusion, deceit.

The only truth is

A sequence of griet

I am the split-cared, the underground wretch

Correcting disorders.

Under your Chevrolets and Dodges I stretch,

Oil-covered, black

Bowed by your orders.