Seventy Years Of Freedom

by Ananya S. Guha / August 27th, 2017

Mother, seventy
years of freedom
have shackled the
house that you made
with the British furniture
I steadfastly tie them
with a nation’s manacles
Even as the yellow house
grew, the nation shrunk
into cavernous hollows
of windswept children
sunken eyes
stained teeth
cadavers
a nation brought primordial
urge of death
now I swallow all symbols
of oppression, forget them
to be caught in the cross fire
of a nation’s freedom.
Seventy years is a long time
I passed only sixty in this nation
whirling into torrid seas
of seas bludgeoned with
blood, and grime
of people who do not understand
these seventy hears of slow, slow time.

Ananya S Guha lives in Shillong in North East India. He has been writing and publishing poetry for the last thirty years, and his poetry has appeared in numerous online publications. He holds a doctoral on the novels of William Golding and currently is a senior academic in India's Indira Gandhi National Open University. Read other articles by Ananya S..

This article was posted on Sunday, August 27th, 2017 at 8:02am and is filed under Poetry.