A Song 136

Aged songsters
of tree and life,
Tuka and Kabira,
tapped the shoulder of
a wood cutter
working down an old peepal;
'Is it fair?', they asked.
'You have a cutting machine,
peepal has none.'
Wiping sweat,
wood cutter replied:
'If  I dont, family will have no dal.'
Added: 'Ajoba, my wife waters and prays
a tulsi every morning;
lights a diya to a peepal in my basti,
pray before starting
for work.'
May was tearing the
old poets;
'words hurt less than saws,'
thought they.
Wood cutter untied a cloth bundle
of bakhris and cut onions,
to lunch;
could not afford a Bisleri.
'Peepals have no re-births,
are always,'
said Kabira to the wood cutter.
'Only humans are born many times over;
Vithala said, ' clarified Tuka.
'To chop peepals?' asked wood cutter.
Late evening,
the peepal was not;
with the day's wages,
wood cutter picked up
dal and rice,
caught a local
home.