The Books
Books are in restless wintery mood,
Their voices seem urgent,
What the books whisper
We prefer not to mention in social circles;
Yet they know more,
Have been where we can’t go
In the clothes we wear;
They are unsettled, we are motionless,
Their voices are foreign to our ears,
They disdain, they will shake us off,
Too many voices, too many lost conversations;
When I open a page, fall into its frosty profundities
To sink like a stone, I talk in clichés;
They hover in time like bad omens
They flap wings; frantic pages cloud the sky;
They are the darkness in our bones
That keeps on sparkling like dead flames;
What struggles, they endure day, night!
Some books unopened stay to sight;
Books of some pasts have been scorched
Or may long live not a page turned,
To die unread of ripe old age,
Or by next generation earned,
Yellowed, book-worms devoured in rage!
There’s a thing common — books or men,
But a few significant can
Every book has its shining creed,
Which we fail to read and believe
