Walls! Fascinating walls!
Different textures, colours, sizes
Conveying different feelings
And countless thoughts
Brick walls enclosing the lives of elites
Cemented walls protecting cozy lives
Marble walls with pearls engraved Exposing accumulated wealth saved
Mud walls with cow dung smeared
Worn out and dilapidated
Protecting tired labourers
From heat or cold or rains
Nailed walls bearing framed paintings
Hiding constructors toil and blood
Shining with ecstatic designs
Arranged by Mason’s daily wagers
But even China’s great Wall
Couldn’t save Qin dynasty fall
Berlin Wall had to crumble
Bowing to Germans will
Gramsci’s writings
Percolated through prison walls
Mandela’s struggles
Seeped through Stony walls
Like benevolent guide
Walls help infants
Stand and take a stride
With joy and confidence
Walls may stall
Movement of humans
But they cannot stop at all
Spread of thoughts and ideas
Sheshu Babu is a writer from anywhere and everywhere
As you are aware, Sheshu, Donald Trump wants to build a massively long wall to keep out illegal immigrants from entering USA from the south. It will also prevent animals and plants from migrating, finding mates and so on.So its being built has huge environmental implications … So many countries have walls to keep out others, who are considered undesirable.
When will humanity start seeing us all, including members of other species, as one? I’m afraid that this understanding will never be realized in a world wherein people identify some as belonging to themselves and others as undesirable aliens to either be ignored or stomped out of existence.
Full of poignant thoughts that prod one’s conscience if that is left in one self. Physical walls separating people can be scaled,demolished or gaping holes blasted in them. But I wonder what is going to happen to those invisible walls that are being assiduously erected by cunning politicians, crafty corporations and fanatic religious torch bearers who won’t rest till whole populations are polarized behind say a Hindu wall, behind a Muslim wall, and a Christian wall and the list goes on. Behind invisible walls of caste, color and race. Behind practically indestructible walls of wealth erected by crony capitalists and their crass consumerism. How are we going to scale these seemingly unsurmountable walls which unlike the poet’s metaphoric wall that provides a toddler with a support in his stride are bent on dividing a sane society into an insane chaos of grotesque walled ghettos of perpetual distrust and disharmony.