THE SLOW DEATH OF A BARD
Boss asks euphemistically
“You’re not the same force you were once!?”
Friends demand anxiously
“Hey! What happened to your antics and puns? ”
He smiles at once and embraces silence!
What can he say of something he wishes to suppress?
There is always in heart, something hush, hush
one cannot divulge and publish!
For a pure materialist
this heart is a bloody pump-set
and for a staunch spiritualist
it is a holy nest where God rests!
But lo for a frustrated bard
his heart is a live hearth
where there is no birth and no death
for pain, laughter, love and hatred!
Burning there are hell-fires
evaporating his every drop of tear.
He is a static stolid volcanic cliff
with no hope for love and no love for life.
He is left to watch the remnant soot
of his unrecognizable past
writing down on his inured inner rampart,
slowly, letter after letter, his suicidal note!
Soon we may hear his last melodious tune
when that over-burnt heart-hearth breaks open!
