FRONTIERS

I AM THE FLOWER & IF I HAD WINGS

I AM THE FLOWER

I will be silent
when you pluck
me from my garden
on your days of transgression.

But I will learn
to grow
in other environs
when you
come to pluck
me each day.

***

Nature,
most profound,
will ensure
I live
in some form.

I will enter your home
as a garland
made from marigold.
At others
I will become the incense of jasmine
spread all over your neighborhood.

Incarnations
will be my order
of the day
in this city.

***
I will become
the bouquet of roses
that you hand over
to an
acquaintance.
I will be
your own nursery's
pride of place.

I will be Nature's
beneficiary.
My gentle home.
The nectar of my being
will be in such
glory's light.
I will flourish
as a flower
in the garden of
earthly delights.

Nature is
a constant gardener.
She will conceal my multiple births
from oppressors.

***

IF I HAD WINGS

If my hands were wings,
I would have told you.
If I had wings
to replace shoulders,
I would have shown you.

I would have flown away
to pay tribute
at the mendicant's shrine,
tolled every temple's
first bell at dawn,
pressed my ears
against the church's
antique walls
to hear divine homilies
and said my prayers
inside the mosque.

***

Nobody would have
dared to reach
and raise a hand on me
or pulled
with brute force
my wrists
that had remained
delicate through teenage.
Never again
would they find me
to press spurious ink-marks
on my fingers.

**
If I had wings,
traitors who pulled me
by the back of my shoulders
to enquire
my identity
wouldn't have been here.
Nor would have remained
fabricators
ceaselessly fitting cudgels
and their stains
of communalism
around my body.

***

If I had wings,
I would have reached
my branch.
I would have
been in concert
with an army of
parrots, pigeons
and mynas.
We would have laughed
and satirised the bane of
human conquests.

If I had wings,
I would have spent
a lifetime atop these branches
without touching
those lower regions
of human birth and race.

To fall into death's final notice,
I would have fallen
once
to become
beloved of the soil
and the grasslands.

Listen now
O Divine Benefactor:
Let me fly now!

****

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