Man In Transition Poem by PRAVEEN KUMAR English Poems

He is torn between was and to be;
Time-tested craft no more takes anywhere
The new world in rise is untested yet;
Yet he must choose between the two
Or bury himself in the gulf of void
And belong nowhere
Like ships, lost in outer space,
Sails out in indefinite course
Till an unknown world drags to its field.

As a child on unsteady legs,
He loves to walk though prefers to sit;
As a bird of unsteady wings.
He loves to fly though keeps to his nest.

The world he knows is his blood and flesh,
Where he hides and rises on freewill;
He sprouted there and spread his shoots
Like old banyan tree;
His world crumbles in the wind of change,
No more roots hold him to the Earth;
He, on the back of the horse of change,
Rises and falls to the rhythms of the ride
Or drops on the ground and dies ‘neath legs.

He is awkward in new world
Where, like fat in water, he floats
Neither absorbs nor absorbed, he frets
Like a prisoner in an interrogation cell
While all doors are shuta ato familiar old world;
He in the world and world in him,
In perpetual revolt,
Strains the life and strains the world;
His feet in new world, his heart in old world,
He falls to the gulf where he lands nowhere,
Till reaches somewhere on feet and heart
In fluid harmony.

Gravity of the old Earth stunts growth
And rise to new space brings fresh pastures;
His roots spread to nerves and bones,
Wait to taste the open variegated sky;
Like bonded soul; he shuttles back and forth
To the old Earth and new space;
To old base and new hopes.
The swing rest him in neutral Zone,
Where enemies in wait, face to face,
Pound his head, hunt his flesh
In rare common cause.

Where the old ends, there new begins
And he is caught between the two;
He cannot stand on the old nor rise to the new
And sadly lost for both;
His feet, unfirm, his wings, too weak,
He is torn in the middle
Like a breached dam
That yields to savage ravage of flood
To end in violent death.

This is the man in transition,
Caught in twilight of two worlds
That blind insight, unwind confusion
And tear his soul as tug unfolds.