This presentation of the poem designed by Tanya Kainaat
A crow once lived
In a giant cage
Painted with ceremonial colours
Fixed in an appropriate place
With a very definite meaning
He lacked in awareness
About all things big and small
And wished many a time
to change his dirty grey tone
to a pure glowing white
He knew others
Who were greater than him
In every way
The owl well versed about night
The koel knew self support
The bulbul trilled her songs
The dove made love and multiplied
But the bird inside the cage
Could not have known
What it meant to love
Or to break
Or to heal
Or to die or multiply
He was always so sad
To see his ugly form
In a coloured cage
He did often to himself
Pose a question
Would I still be a crow
If my cage
of definite colours
Of appropriateness
Was taken away?”
Of course it was not possible
to conceive of a plain looking crow
Without even a pretty cage
However
One day a little obtrusion
When night came late
And daybreak too harshly
And rain was too scarce
Or the dew burnt like fire
Under the frozen moon
Took away the bird’s eye view
and replaced it with darkness
So that it could see
Neither morning nor night
Neither cage nor colour
Neither arched roofs
Nor golden domes
Nor sweet flowers
Nor gleaming sand
Above its blindness
Then the bird aspired to love
The unseen hand
that fed it
the breeze that
caressed it
the whisper of eternity
that came from some
hidden source
Then it happened
The day that the cage
With its painted colours broke
And it was no more rooted
In an appropriate spot
With a definite meaning
That the bird
learnt so subtly
to fly
blind
On love’s
Undiscriminating
Undefined
Untravelled road.