Through The Ages

By Ishan Jadhav

Centuries ago, a philosopher thought,

Of free citizens and borderless nations,

And filled his peers with vagabond's truths,

Which were twisted and learnt by generations to come,

Piercing through its volumes its message burns,

Yearning to be heard, trapped in an age,

Like a grotesque, silent wail,

Carefully masked from the layman’s notice,

And secured in a deep dungeon.

Language of truth,

Is like a scent which travels,

Far, and carries, the suppressed emotion,

Burns all lies and in the ashes it stays,

And shows its message in its blaze,

Illuminating the land for several days.

But scarcely does the scent reach,

The civilization of a forlorn beach,

Which boulders surround and rocks inhabit,

The sweetness of the scent morphs into an ugly bitterness,

Which is blindly welcomed by ages of ignorance,

Worse still, brandished as a sword,

In the hope of clearing away pestilence,

Which they thought had dug its claws deep in their skin.

The same scent, hear me,

Reaches the pious and the naïve,

And elates those souls the same arrow,

That had once pierced,

The former tribe terribly amiss,

But it guides the innocent better still,

For beauty seldom needs eyes,

Just like stories seldom need ears.

By Ishan Jadhav