Prison Songs Poem by Pankhuri Sinha

Sung perfectly to tune,
Unrehearsed,
Spontaneous,
From the prisoner's soul,
All together,
In a group hardly contained,
With some actually knowing the reality of another's crime,
And the church folks somewhat lamenting the souls of the doomed,
Somewhat asking for more repentence,
Somewhat unaccomodating,
All of these notes and tunes,
Floating in the prison songs,
Sunday morning.
An uneasy group,
Buried though in that sound.
And then there were lone singers,
And I was one of them,
Folks who could not be alone,
In their cells,
And sang aloud,
And sometimes even got the compliment of silent listening,
Or folks who simply sang in their cells,
Few singers of far away languages.
Although many spoke them.