Bean There, Daikon That

The season has done everything for the cabbage
All the things it needs but our painfully missing serenity
For us the cacophony is blatant in the market
All it shows is the metaphor of ache and inadequacy
The picture of what we long and with us what is wrong

The green capsicum knows it before it turns yellow
Tho’ still it knows the change and the change it is for good
And it is far better when it equates with the ennui
We know around us the colours never change
Perhaps we can say the brightest red is as it is
We see it in the street, we see it in the blood-stained gunmen
They are teeming in numbers more than the highest seasonal produces

We cannot buy some peace
And the unchanging grey sky only enhances the scum
The French beans elsewhere claim they are better
Our own broad beans have ducked in iromba ’fraid

It is frustrating when we don’t have what we can call as ours
The market-shed verbalises the show
Of seasonal abundance
Of all the flight of happiness but our plight
And we cannot still get even a piece of peace
When we can get the chilly and coriander for free
Exceptions we can see for example, it’s no big deal
We can put anything in singju

What we cannot put is some reason
So when they call it the bitter bean
We call it the stink bean
Though it is not necessarily sensible
What we share is only our difference
We share only the difference
The carts of grapes and apples know it
Life has sucked out all the juice from us
And there is no time to rest and look back
And we are just flowing with the tide, as always, forever.