Slavery and Escape

For every beat of the drum, in steady rhythm

A whip cracks, chains tauten; humans, chains themselves

A beat, and an axe digs into the trunk, a scarred willow

Sweat, blood, pain, cry, pleas and prayers- silent and unheard; tears unseen

A membrane is torn, yet the drumbeats

The slogging ’machines’ are worn, yet the whips

One stroke of the axe, the last straw

The cut too deep, can bear no more; collapse, fall.

But the land is same, destined to be enslaved

The scattered seeds, a new generation is born

The children rise, doomed with the same ill fate,

The axe whips on.

 

The membrane is torn, but now no drum beats,

For they pounce and render their master slave, all man and beast

But abused in body, mind and soul, they succumb to fatigue,

It takes its time, but life comes around in its own way.

Slaves now remain no more, at least in man and beast,

But the axe, the tree, no metaphor; Nature too abused,

Tortured and enslaved by the same master, 

Its atrocities haven't ceased.

Slaves remain no more, but the ‘lost master’ still exists,

It crawls beneath and finds its last few moments of comfort bestowed by the shadow of the tree,

The slave-driver sought compassion from the same Nature it exploited so brutally,

And then, eternal peace.

Revenge, sought man, and finds for itself Death, its true home,

After its ‘Master-Slave’ sojourn;

Love, sought the tree, and it lives on

Bearing the scars for all to see and learn.