The Sparrow’s Story

caged in the hencoop a sparrow,
It dreams of flying away to Shangri-la
As wires and metal bars of the cage ridicule
not its plan of an ever-impending flight,
But its arrogance of dreaming
What the cage owner would not even dare to.
It has seen in many wakeful nights,
The inevitability of dawn
The coming of light, though, is never enough
New days—its company of melancholy
Arrive duly, only for some hopeful fellowship.

It is one thing to dream, quite another to realise it
The tragedy of life, in and out of the shackle
The unruly imperfection of a night in which a day would melt into
The wretchedness of wires and metal and their damn slavishness
The invisible cage owner who possesses the puppets
All of these, the sparrow knows not, but its destination.

For the dreams it lives;
But its stories are beautiful only in narration
While, inside the cage,
Even breathing is becoming burdensome
The sparrow's life is sinking into oblivion.