The Train On The Track. Poem by Aloke Mukherjee

I live in third world, may be second, I dunno.

Some savant sitting in his university-office, big

Ole daddy, divided earthly crust between ourselves.



I am one of the teeming millions, jostling in the

over-crowded trains, people hanging on the

door-handle. The train rolls on keeping us alive,

we move to and fro just to survive.I wish I could

derail the train to see what happens to my soul

in the cold night-train carrying souls in limbo.



In the fall, the fields are bare, nothing grows

Let us come deeper, in the entrails of life, burning

with hunger, with naked body, hands thrown up

in prayer. Do you smell the scent of soil? sweetened

with body's sudor-budding life for the next summer,

so I sow the poetry on the lonely fields.