By Prem Gongaju
I
A poem cannot stop a bullet.
A novel cannot diffuse a bomb.
But we are not helpless.
We can sing the truth
and name the liars.
-Salman Rushdie
So, taking the cue from Rushdie the Versifier, whose profile in literary courage encouraged me to sing from the perch on a barren bough, but I stopped soon after hearing the Beat Poet Ginsberg howl:
“Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!
“Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
“Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!”
The full-throated Ustaad and the howling Poet together ignited the lamp fed by the tallow of truth and veracity, showing me the path to the mooring for my bark. I deemed to unmoor it from its comfy berth, seeking counsel and camaraderie in the parliament of my soul.
And I may sing in the chorus of my breaths while I ply my oar toward the Mnemosyne, away for the river Lithe.
II
I am to sing the veracious song vociferously to the voracious Moloch devouring the infants’ flesh and all;
and the sycophants fought over the scraps in the temple of doom and death.
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair” in the topsy-turvy affair of bait and switch, switch and bait by the playbook of doublespeak. High is low, and low is high; people scream and people sigh. The standard is the golden calf; the priest cants in stans behalf.
III
A poem cannot stop a bullet, a howl cannot stop a Moloch.
And yet–I will abide by Mr. Ecclesiastes’ counsel for A Time for Everything.
Meanwhile, I hear the children chanting outside:
“Liar, liar pants on fire. Nose as long as a telephone wire.”
