LITERARY CORNER
Here is yet another revealing poem The New Leam feels happy to share with its readers.
The Strategy
Kunwar Narain
For thousands of years the same man
is being attacked like a battered old sum
is being asked over and over again,
Who are you?
Where do you come from?
What is your name?
In an octagonal room with eight unmoving corners
the prisoner doubles as the prison keeper,
he walks up and down,
holding three prison guards behind the bars,
outside like invisible magnetic lines
spreads the jungle of iron bars that catch, and confine.
It certainly is the most unassailably profound proof
of the success of a tremendously well executed
military maneuver.
That as soon as we grip a gun between our palms
we begin to see the enemy everywhere.
Translated from Hindi by Mrinal Pande.
