Locked Down

It takes a while to hear the cries

of the land so subdued,

to sift through the many voices and

discern the rising cadence,

Our riots must have been too many,

The uproarious bickering to maintain our illusions,

too engrossing,

For what else could have ever justified

The insouciance of our lot?

In a teeming world, humdrum too has a voice,

A voice so dauntless, it has never known reverence

A voice so unconfounded, it has never ventured

to discover what it always knew.

In our sequestered abodes now we sit,

We have begun to hear you, in all your forms,

Dumbfounded and scared by turns,

Only because we are learning to be your children again,

On your sufferance yet again,

We are desorbing our filth

With the selfish love of a child,

Who has never seen nor ever known

how,

The udder at which it feeds

Knows relief only when it has been sucked dry.