Question

Gandhi and poetry by K. satchidanandan themes​

Answer 1

GANDHI AND POETRY

One day a lean poem

reached Gandhi’s ashram

to have a glimpse of the man.

Gandhi spinning away

his thread towards Ram

took no notice of the poem

waiting at his door,

ashamed at not being a bhajan.

The poem now cleared his throat

And Gandhi glanced at him sideways

through those glasses that had seen hell.

“Have you ever spun thread?” he asked,

“Ever pulled a scavenger’s cart?

Ever stood in the smoke of

An early morning kitchen?

Have you ever starved?”

The poem said: “I was born in the woods,

in a hunter’s mouth.

A fisherman brought me up

in a cottage.

Yet I knew no work, I only sing.

First I sang in the courts:

then I was plump and handsome

but am on the streets now,

half-starved.”

“That’s better,” Gandhi said

with a sly smile. “But you must give up this habit

of speaking in Sanskrit at times.

Go to the fields. Listen to

The peasants’ speech.”

The poem turned into a grain

and lay waiting in the fields

for the tiller to come

and upturn the virgin soil

moist with new rain.