Coward’s Death
Death
comes many times a day
but
I send them all back
to
be alive, to be alive!
Don’t
I know, nor can foresee,
the
whims of the Land.
Only
I want to be alive
till
the death I’m doomed to!
Death
comes many times to me
through
the morning newspaper
to
my wife’s kitchen;
she
cooks and serves all the day
wearing
clothes, hides ragged petticoat
but,
yearns to purchase
a
branded inner fashion
for
my daughter fit
to
be attractive
before
the fortunate man,
for
marriage! Death comes then,
but
I have to send them back again
as
I want to be alive
till
the death I’m doomed to!
Death
comes often a day
when
I rebuke my young son looking for a job,
First
division all through, fights hand-to-hand
with
Bablu Bose, a local party member
teases
my daughter often,
beside
the local-office, on her college-way.
Death
comes then, though,
I
go to Mr. Bablu Bose without fail
to
beg an apology for my son
and
to save my young girl;
and,
send them back again,
as
I want to be alive
till
the death I’m doomed to!
Death
tries many a time to make
an
alliance, and seduces me
to
write a mad note, help,
I
have to send them back,
as
I want to be alive
till
the death I’m doomed to!
Let
Shakespeare blame me, ‘a Coward’,
let
Donne sing, ‘death be not proud’
let
all the greats speak as they find,
but,
I have to send them all back
again
and again, within me to be,
as
I want to be alive
till
the death I’m doomed to!
I
want to be alive
till
the death I’m doomed to!
(Published in Poetcrit 30.2 (July
2017): 125)