The Flight Of Birds

“a poem should be wordless
as the flight of birds.”
—Archibald Macleish, Ars Poetica.

birds don’t sing in their flight

for them flying is a muse
they compose mid-air
weave agnostic verse
sneering haughtily at our absurdity
as they float over our meaningless mosques and churches
and those patrolled international borders
and other disputed sites
where the guns go bang bang bang all the time
they swing over there losing their birdegos
(ego is difficult to retain in mid-flight)
wondering about and watching men plucking out
and quashing the lives of other men and women and
poor helpless children and they
shed a birdtear or two from there
a birdtear that is lost midway due to heat of some explosion
down below some crazy fanatical bomb detonating
killing instantly the people and the city and the forests
and even the pitiable babybirds who are yet to learn to fly

they contemplate of writing poems
about a bird’s egg charring
before even being boiled and scratch their beaks
unsure if this is a metaphor or simile or other poetic device

o the birds have lots and lots and lots to write about
o their writings will never be banned

they borrow freedom
to write poems in the sky
they come back and
pass it on to us
we take the song only
brutally
but at least we take the song

to take the poem
to unscramble the words from the song and to put it back again
as song so spontaneously that it remains the poem and the song
to remember forever this refrain whose melody haunts us
and to hum that refrain which preserves our sanity
perhaps we need to fly
a trifle aimlessly like birds

or because we are humans
six-sensed creatures with massive egos
and massive superegos and massive egos on the ego
and because of possessing gray matter
what doctors call medulla oblongata
we need to feel with our red hearts
than think with some unlocatable mind

we need to look deeper. . .
into ourselves, into eyes
we need to lose ourselves
then, and only then

the poems will come
silent
wordless
as the flight of birds

(First published in Indian Literature)