A CITY UNDER CONSTRUCTION

A war-eaten city
Awaits rebuilding

Treasured old tools are
Searching for new hands, 
New corridors cropping up
On the old relics

To accommodate
Some gilded intermediaries,
Some complacent pontiffs,
Some desperate yuppies,
Some perplexed mandarins,
 With
Their cackling progeny

(© DEEPAK DARSHAK) 

REBELS

(A TRIBUTE TO FEDERIGO GARCIA LORCA)  

Rebels are not always the folks

Wearing black clothes,

Holding flags of protest in their hands,

Shouting sharp slogans

Every now and then

In an incensed crowd, 
It’s not often that 
They can be made out easily, due to 
Their clenched fists, 
Their rambunctious yells of fury, 
Their impassioned harangues, 
Their incisive war calls for freeing 
Countless budding dreams
And crops of anxious hopes 
Caged by iron-curtained tyranny 

Rebels do not always wear

The signs of resistance

On their faces,

But they burn with

An anger, an anxiety, a discontent,

A deep thirst,

Seething in  

Their introvert conduct and tacit traits,  

Waiting to explode like

 Torrents, humongous, irrepressible,

When the time comes calling for  

The collapse of

Impervious Bastilles’