Age In Ruins Poem by PRAVEEN KUMAR English Poems

Here, everything is everywhere,
Yet, nothing is anywhere;
Where, all, in front, yet, out of reach.

Nothing come to hands, nothing come to mouth
Though everything is in everybody's range;
All are lost like birds overhead
In blue sky, far distant from rugged rich world;
No pains and pleasures, no passions stir;
All are dry leaves, caught in a whirlpool;
All are sooty smokes of tall black chimney;
All run on hire like a carriage-horse
Whose eyes are bound for straight tiresome sight;
No weight to sink, no wings to fly,
Only strong legs to flee from odds;
Thick colours sit on tasteful light hues;
All are sweat and dirts, spread in hasty heaps,
No freshness anywhere, no leisurely pleasure,
All are fragmented hopes on top of a dazzling world.

Weak heart stills endless desires,
Shineless eyes meet flashes of distant wildfire
That exists only in muddles of tired mind;
All are directionless, uncertain in self,
While all doors are wide open without signboards;
Sunshines, no more warm, full-moon, not cool
From the cage of unfamiliar horizons;
All are tall trees with shallow roots
Whom strong wind can uproot at will.

This is an age of breadth and height,
But no depth, no strength, no inner light.

Smiles brood like a withered flower
And laughs wither like shrieks of a dying man,
While painful moans, like hissing noise of steams,
And joys in short spasms, jump across man's reach
In the inert world where no sparks ignite.

Everything here is disturbingly calm,
Everything here is unexciting game;
None move, but like a wound spring
Eject the leaks of frustrations.

All cracking bones, mere skeletons;
No flesh, no streams of life anywhere,
No bridges, no sparks, no prompt responses;
All are dwarfs, retarded minds,
Who know not how to steer through their worlds
Or vent feelings or tide over their thoughts.

Here, the life is a zigzag puzzle
With random exits and random entries;
Here, the life is a snake and ladder game
Where fall and rise are sheer chance.

Like sand-bed on the side of a roaring sea,
The modem age is dry 'neath wet wind;
The sparkling seashore is plain like white clouds,
No pains, no pleasures, but unending boredom;
Nothing sprouts, nothing penetrates,
All crumbles in shapeless hold;
Visions blur
While smokes hang from disturbed sky
And all live step to step and day to day
In desperate world;
It is a world shattered inside and outside
And no harmony anywhere;
It is sad, still, black, sad ruins
Of a long forgotten rich age
That disheartens in contrast
Where though everything was there, nothing anywhere now.

Man lives in cages everywhere in this age
In dreaded isolation from within and without.