H. S. Shiva Prakash

DEAR FRIEND JOE

It has collapsed:
The colossal building
Your black finger pointed to
On that New York morning
Shining white-
The symbol of the victory
Of white capitalists
Built on the remnants
Of our ancestral lands
With the broken limbs
Of our gods and goddesses
(How can our innocent gods and goddesses
outsmart the craft and cunning
Of businessmen?)

But, dear friend Joe,
What pulled it down
Was not the whirlwind of change
We were dreaming of;
Even after the fall
Our gods and goddesses did not return
To their temples
Neither did our children
Return home

Look! Winged monstrous sand dunes
Of final darkness
Covering the face of the setting sun
Behind the ruins
Of that building

Screams
Once again
Mutilated corpses
Once again

Tell me , dear friend Joe,
Why is only sin the solution
For the sins of our world?
Why does goodness,
Like you,
Climbing up and down the staircase
Of the dirt-filled apartment
Of your Harlem home
Beaten and lamed
By the bastards of civilizatilon?
Meanwhile
Skewed beings born of fear
Their hands and legs in different directions
Their eyes and noses in different directions,
Drunken,
Steal and kill each other
While a blind knife or a pistol
Lurks for them in the gloom.

Dear friend Joe
Has your rickety house survived
With its memories of broken marriages?

Has the fear of sudden attacks
By unknown hands
Still survived?

Such things survive, I know
Whether empires rise or fall
The huts of the poor will survive for ever

Though
Your Gandhi
Our Luther are both dead

When gods and goddesses vanish
Earth needs
Insects to go on mothering

The Watchman’s Monologue from “Agamemnon”

No night was longer than tonight
Among so many sleepless nights
For twenty long years.

No night was longer

How long!
Enough of this
Better die than live this old age
Without sleep.

Just as this resolved was being made

Look!
The fall of Troy!
Victory to Greeks.

Torches
Lighting up
One by one

In fort after fort
Has brought the news.

“It’s over at last! ”
Before I could heave
A sigh
Who
Who is she,
The one muttering
All alone
In the magic light of the burning moon?
Who is she?
Cassandra?
O Cassandra,
My mouth refuses to puzzle out
The nightmarish truth
Hidden in your half speech.

The father killing the daughter!
Hatred is not exhausted.
The wife killing the husband!
Hatred is not exhausted.
The son killing the mother!
Hatred is not exhausted.

The compound hatred of
The ghost of the mother
Coming back to kill the son
For killing the mother
For killing the husband
For killing the daughter.

Hatred is not exhausted!
Darkness has not ended
The battle has not ended.

Only the magic light of the moon,
Cassandra…