(Talking to a Friend over a Glass of Ale
On a Day of Strain and Rain)
We
We all have deep in us
A wound
Like a flower open half.

A tremulous half ope’ crimson mouth

Dreading to bloom in full,
In the dark of our deep
It dwells
Like a rose of sinister hues

Quivering in fear of the sun and the wind
In throes at the prospect of rain_touch
This flower of a wound shrinks
Farther and farther
Into some rank recess of our deep.

Fostered by fury and fear
There it festers
And hosts unseen vermin and worms.

Unhealed and unholy
This wound in us persists.

Out on the surface we crack
Our stale jokes over our ale,
Put on our act of being sage
And smugly smile,
Unaware of the stink we raise.

We
The hollow men*

*With due apologies to T. S. Eliot.
C M Rajan