Seventy Years Of Freedom by Ananya S Guha

Mother, seventy

years of freedom

have shackled the

house that you made

with the British furniture

I steadfastly tie them

with a nation’s manacles

Even as the yellow house

grew, the nation shrunk

into cavernous hollows

of windswept children

sunken eyes

stained teeth

cadavers

a nation brought primordial

urge of death

now I swallow all symbols

of  oppression, forget them

to be caught in the cross fire

of a nation’s freedom.

Seventy years is a long time

I passed  only sixty in this nation

whirling into torrid seas

of  seas bludgeoned with

blood, and grime

of people who do not understand

these seventy hears of slow, slow time.