Penitence

                          @NKS

Why should I, in the name of truth,

lament that past which

in passing I craved and rejoiced

in different stages of life?

Boyhood day-dreaming

extreme passion of the youth

success and failure of wish

ups and downs encountered in the race

were not, I feel, individual

but for all, universal.

Yet each one, like me,

has undergone those changes

of the body and of the soul

in one’s short (or long?) span of life,

each tends to feel a pang-

why one did or didn’t, could or couldn’t

Playtimes are for play

love-times are for love

one does not plan ‘what where and why’

should or shouldn’t drop in on the fray

things do happen, why is unknown      

they come up willy-nilly, automatically.

If that be so, there couldn’t be erring

what happened was unavoidable thing

each event was right, and thus contextual

if same has not happened, something else has happened to all

Despite this truth, at certain times

in all stages of life, a pang

keeps knocking those soft spots

of the mind as elbow knocks the wood

to remind the present-self

that more in the past was regrettable.

I of the past was a different I

the past-I has become an alien

I of the present loathes, despises that I

it hates most part of that I

rues, goads and laments that I.

The present-I that laments the past

will, nevertheless, lament this present

on the days ahead, until the death

the process of hating the self will persist

till the sense keeps working,

or one doesn’t stop breathing.

Each outside smiling façade

hides a tormenting thought inside

not transparent, but opaque in each man

hiding keeps on, keeps going on

and the soul leaves the body with that hiding

Man, a miserable thief

steals, regrets and steals

differently in different times

present theft is just, past unjust

but all thefts are to be stored

in layers, in stakes-to be rued upon

Each one does the same,

each one hides the same,

pretending that no one knows it

assuming it a personal secret

somehow the veil is working

somehow the known is unknown thing.

With this truth, I hereby declare-

whatever I did in the past was fair

in each stage of time and context

I did what was right and earnest

to me what others do is transparent

all are same, none different.

Like everyone I also hide

some part of past always inside

to suit social norms and guidelines

as silently agreed upon confines

but lament? No I will none

If man is human I am the one.