The Princes
A man
is always on
top of the world,
playing the impresario
and deigning
to look down
at the string orchestra
in the well of this theater-
a theater of the absurd.
Some men,
with hot-blooded anthropology
on their fathers' sides,
will always be arrogant princes.
When I look at
the elephant
in the picture,
the world of obeyance
shrinks around him.
The palanquin-bearers
and other helpers-
and the woman
in miniature-
crouch
under the politics
of making it past
this uphill climb
to Ambar Fort.
The arrogant prince,
a glutton
and defiler of realms,
looks up,
this moveable feast
of patronage
shaded under the open sky.
***
They say
sooner or later
every man
must face the
unenviable task
of not being
shielded from
his gravest sins
under the open sky
wherever he may run
for cover.
But look at this
moveable feast.
It has been going
uphill
and coming
down to mount
another
new
arrogant prince
on its shoulders
for hundreds of years.
Every new shoulder
carrying a new glutton
and defiler of realms
has shrunk
down to these
lowlands,
misfortune
piled with the unbearable weight.
***
Elephants come and see
this order.
They just move
with the glossier
shades of this picture.
There's nowhere
else to go
for them.
Author: Prithvijeet Sinha
Photo Credit: The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash
NOTE: Ambar means sky, and in this instance the use of that word relates to the arrogance of men that has become their unfortunate default mode of operation.
0 Comments