Tyranny of Letters

[atiguhya padma]

What do you expect of us?
You open your mouth
And we march out
In our uniforms

Stand to attention
Come to a halt.

With a flick of the wrist
You make us cross the bridge
Until we reach the other side

Above, nine storeys, below just mist
That clears to see one more level
An then another
And so on.

And what do you expect of them?
That they should like us?
Here we stand
Forever static in appearance
Glazed with changing meaning.

An audience of fifty at a pinch,
A hundred at best.
For these you parade us
Across an empty land
This waste that we populate
For your pleasure
(And you think for others).

And when we are on display
We freeze into obscurity
Forever pushed further down
Into the morass
The mulch of all the others
That mould away like us.

Sometimes you make us exercise
For an audience of one.
You then bring us
To our knees,
You crush our world,
And enclose us
In some plastic cage.

We don’t trust you.
We know that you manipulate
And distort us.

So you went to Trier and Aachen,
And thought you would write
Something worth reading.

But what did you find?

That we are now reaching a complete .