The Lead

If I were a hero, I'd want to be a legend.
Recounting me, historians will eons expend.
Stories of my strengths would never end.
To immortality, my stories would transcend.

Although a God-figure make me not!
Don't scour my white sheet for the black dot.
For where is divine, atheists there ought.
But my ideals and I aren't for naught.

My family, I might have abandoned
To be under the Bodhi tree awakened
Toward my wife, I may seem disinclined
To the country's freedom, I was aligned.

If others make me faultless,
Does it arise out of devoutness?
Or for want of my ideals to progress?
Else only to make themselves timeless?

Those who sing my praise, of course, intended
To make my feats leave all astounded
Make my nemesis a demon ten headed
Or he and his brothers seem like a hundred?

But those who represent a cause terminal
Are lost when the world traverses that interval
If I stood for some value cardinal
Wouldn't I then become immortal?

For the cause of freedom, many would fight
Truth and non-violence enjoy eternal might.
Many a war won by many a knight
But one stands out for Dharma and what is right.

Why else would the world commend
A man who lost fighting for an 'evil' friend?
If I were a hero, I'd like to be a legend
Known for the means rather than the end.