Lockdown

-          Manprasad Subba

Hadn’t been accustomed to the word lockdown,

that sounds burdensome and makes us frown.

I am rather familiar with the word lock-up;   

have seen innocents also falsely locked up.

On some occasions I, too, nearly landed in the lock-up,

but for a leader’s favours the matters were hushed up. 

The smart guy’s allegiance to the party in power

made all in the locality astonishingly cower. 

But it’s the phrase ‘lock-out’ that is too insolent

standing akimbo in the way of the innocents.  

On seeing this, the tea-bushes turn stupefied

and all the trails across the garden go to hide.   

Only a giant Lock with cold indifference hangs

from the nose of factory gate that’s deaf to pangs.

The factory wears the look of a closed museum.

The manager’s bungalow keeps deafening mum.

Mute goes the powerful vocal cords of the siren    

and the garden with all its greenness looks barren.  

And the green-gold workers, without the siren’s whine,

are suddenly overwhelmed by the super-surplus time.

Then the poor folks are at their wit’s end

knowing nothing at all how to spend

such an overwhelming wealth of time

beneath which quietly they lie supine.    

They are haunted by the ghost of the Lock

that defies being exorcised by the endless talk.

This recurs every year when dry season is near.

Yet to them these tea-bushes are truly so dear.  

(But why should these lines play such a rhyme

while telling about their too harsh a time?

 But what if rhyme forms on its own accord

and the footfalls of rhythm want to be heard?)

   

And now this ‘Lockdown,’ so unfamiliar a word,

has come to distance individuals from the herd.

Unlike the notorious lock-up or lock-out 

this Lockdown swells with the stories of doubt.

But Lockdown is the only, only weapon left

with human beings who’re now suddenly bereft

of their craft, cleverness and super intelligence

and they’re now piteously pushed to the fence.   

----------------------------------------------------

May 02,  2020.