O Kalidasa

O Kalidasa, the king of metaphor!

We are still doing what you did years before

How could you finally transform

If you share with us, so we can also reform.

The transformed ‘you’ is respected by us, though

The fool ‘you’ is followed through and through

And it is not confined to our land alone

All over the world it is on the throne.

People are fighting everywhere in the world,

Mountains and rivers are not saying a word.

Issue is our cause, and cause is our issue

All are right, correct, even the wrong seems true.

The branch you sat on is the one whole tree

We live in one space we so disagree.

Nothing seems good enough to have any effect,

Tell us how like you, we could resurrect.

You fell off just once and to you came the sense!

We’re failing all the time yet no intelligence?

Tell us how this cutting will be away from the whole,

Peace to be the password, the only clever parole.


Note:
The poem stands on the story of Kalidasa. The legend says that Kalidasa, one of the greatest poets that ever lived in Indian soil, was a fool cutting the branch of a tree he was sitting on with an ax. When he fell on the ground, Saraswati, the Goddess of learning, came to his rescue and gave him a boon,, which eventually resurrected him into a poet with an outstanding talent. However, there are many versions of this story. Later, he came to be known as the master of roopak (metaphor) and had authored brilliant novels including Meghadootam, Shakuntalam.