"Poverty Line" -- Thought provoking !!!!

[kumar Ratan]

Poverty Line

I was merely poor, very poor.

I had no food to eat

No clothes to hide my shame

No roof over my head.

You, the very soul of benevolence

You came to me and said:

"No, poor is an ugly word

It robs people of human dignity,

No, you are actually poverty stricken."

Stricken by relentless poverty, my days of suffering,

My days of pain, ran on day after day,

I wasted away, my affliction grew,

Suddenly, you appeared again, and said:

"Look, I've been thinking about it,

'poverty-stricken' isn't a good word either; you're impoverished."

My days and nights in chronic impoverishment,

Panting in the furnace of summer,

Shivering in the chill of winter nights,

Soaking in the monsoon rain

I became more and more impoverished.

But you are tireless,

You came to me again, and said:

"Your impoverishment makes no sense

Why must you be impoverished?

You have always been deprived,

You're deprived, historically deprived."

There was no end to my deprivation,

To bed half-fed year after year,

To bed in the street, under the naked sky,

I had a skeletal existence.

But you did not forget me,

This time, your clenched first raised high,

You called out:

"Awake, arise, ye dispossessed !"

By then, I had not the strength to rise,

Hunger and starvation had almost finished me,

My rib cage rose and fell like bellows,

I could not keep up with

Your enthusiasm and excitement.

Long days have passed in the meantime,

You are now wiser,

And smarter.

This time, you have brought a blackboard with you,

On it, with great care, and with some chalk,

You have drawn a perfect straight line;

This time you've had to work hard,

You wipe the sweat from your brow and tell me:

" See this line? Below it,

Way below it, is where you are."

Wonderful !

Thank you, thank you so much !

Thank you for my poorness,

Thank you for my poverty,

Thank you for my impoverishment,

Thank you for my deprivation,

Thank you for my dispossession,

And finally, thank you for that long and perfect line,

Thank you for this bright and shining gift.

( This poem has been written by Tarapada Ray, a poet n writer of contemporary Bengali literature and a former civil servant. This poem was written originally in Bengali, titled ' Daridrarekha' and translated from Bengali by TLM (the little magazine)  

--
Kumar Ratan

A Student of Development Studies

email:kumarra...@gmail.com

web page: www.haritprayas.blogspot.com

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