HOME
IS A HERITAGE
- P C K Prem (India)
Home is a philosophy of
heritage
I still count each mud block,
in an age of red bricks
that boast of richness and
inflate ego.
I do not know why I do it
but it gives pleasure
I fail to explain.
Past is inscrutable and
pleasant
but still I do not love,
it sends you to
unsophisticated life
rural is a gentle thought of
a tribal instinct,
only elites want to
revivify,
to perpetuate love,
for nature, poor peasants
and the dalits,
love that exists nowhere
and yet it fills documents
of history,
and I sit, shuffle pages
and feel images rising high
and so home is a heritage,
I tell everyone.
Home is an experience, a
feeling
and when you move in the
hallways of past,
it resurrects and takes you
back
to verdant fields,
grasslands and little
valleys.
You look up, and mountain
of the north beckon
it looks after river,
every stream, plant and
tree as if.
I stand in the vast
half-harvested fields
with a sickle,
a shovel and a bamboo
basket,
a momentary thought
a past truth, a naughty
smile with a lie,
a quick act and I see, I
run down
to a water spring,
to play with village girls
and boys
that was history of joy and
innocence
I write.