To Love With Justice

By Anand Gupta

With all my flavours and flaws

I’ve tried my best to love you

Yet I’m sorry for not being enough

For not being there to uncoil your silence

Even upon seeing your tears inundating my soul

Like always, I’ve failed to wipe them out

I’ve failed myself and you, my love

But for all that can be said and not

I’ve loved you from the time I can’t remember

You’ve grown on me like sunshine in the winter

Like Kaner in the cracks of the denuding Thar

For every second, age and epoch

Your thought hasn’t ever left me —

Nor shall it till my death, or not even then

Yet I’m sorry for not being the love

You always wanted me to be—a brave swain

If anything, forgive me for my inexpressiveness

Cowardice and sheepishness basking in shame

Forgive me for not iterating the dictum of love

Forgive me, my love, for not loving you with

The passion of the Christ seeking justice

I wish I could be another Schindler standing tall

Crossing the Rubicon and giving rights to Gaul

Against the tyranny of Everyday Evil you face

Alas! My tears couldn’t even wipe the stains of blood

Seeping from your streets every now and then

For I’m not sorry to you alone but

To every child, young and old there

Who dies crying in age of counting stars

Who discovers days darker than the nights

With no end in the sight — or even

Their sights are taken by the guns of the despots

Image of elves, goblins, hobbits, fairies

Fade in the dreams of children when

They hear sounds of boots besides fairy tales

Being narrated by their sobbing mothers with smiles

Trying to brave their longest night

They fear to fall asleep in their cradles

They fear to see their dreams again

For all you and all there are going through I’m sorry

Sorry for not being the hope I should have been

Sorry I couldn’t write the love letters to you

Oiling love and justice with you on the canvas

But still I wish in some distant life when

The Heaven will live upto Its meaning and

The justice will flow in the rivers not blood

The Sun will bring the merry morning not terror

Streets will be flocked by lovers not enlisted men

And children will cry for their toys not dead

I will meet you there, my love, with my heart in my mouth

Confessing how much I’ve always loved you.

By Anand Gupta