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Kumaara Sukeja

Others

3.4  

Kumaara Sukeja

Others

Munawar, The Bard

Munawar, The Bard

2 mins
237


How could poesy thrive
in the womb
of a piece of tanned, smelly hide ?
It's an avowed secret-one might admit,
albeit grudgingly,
of the plier's trade.
The cobbler's bone-hard, yet,
nimble fingers
are seen chiseling away,
with alacrity---
pausing, occasionally,
to wipe the sweat-drops
off his eye brow--,
While, privately,
his mind, fondly, recalls
the euphoric moment
of the AWAKENING
he had---
many seasons ago---
in the precincts of the town's tannery---
Under the scorching heat
of its furnace,
it was, indeed,
a baptism by fire---
That his robust frame would ,
hereafter, 
In the wake of his dreary daily toil--- 
stretched, unrelentingly, by taut,
unforgiving skin
hardened up to the bone-marrow--
In the wee-hours,
host a poet, prim and proper
in a newly-cobbled veneer--- 
Who would, by a cold-blooded choice...

Stay wide awake
with a pen for his new tool,
And, heed
the clarion- call
of his poetic conscience-
nascent, yet, committed...
to carry out to the last letter,
the commands of the Goddess of Muse !
The poet, who would pen---
for posterity--
the hitherto untold tales
of the pain and suffering 
of his generation---
pictorial impact
of his graphic accounts
would display
his skills honed
to the letter'T',
Paradoxically,
perfected at the tannery!

The uncommon commoner:
people around soon noticed...
Here, he was,
cobbling together
colorful comfort-wear,
and, concurrently,
conjuring up
rhymes in rhythmic verses---
mellifluous to their ears---
with the versatility of a seasoned word-smith !
In earlier times,
he might have been labelled
a rebel in the eyes of the Custom---
Soliloquizing in solitude,
and with a defiant passion,
etching metrical lines with an abandon
on the sooty walls of the tannery---
his secure abode.
And, THAT was one "hide-out"
the King's guards
would, never, dare to seek--
for the place's reeking reputation--
as was the popular belief--
had reached even
the portals of the purgatory !
The "Master Book Of Verses",which,
the Royal Poets had reasoned---
in their collective wisdom---
our 'unlicensed' bard had,
in his possession--
In the present times
of cultivated civility,
their progeny 
and other pretenders
are confined to ponder
privately or publicly,
a plethora of possibilities
that, in his hard to reign in
heart
flows
an unique plasma, which,
channelizes
the surge of creative blood
through
his "unrepentant" veins,,,
And, Munawar,
fumbling,
with a pair
of shoe-laces,
might,
simply smile
in modesty.

 

 


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