PARLIAMENT OF OWLS

            

              PARLIAMENT OF OWLS

                    

              Thick green groves, sprawling forest dotted with willows

               Ferns ,hedge rows, meandering meadows and green clad hills

               Silently sink into the dark gown of night escaping the gaudy gaze

               Crickets sing the dawn chorus in irregular rhymes at the beat of night’s drum 

               As the sky bends to the esoteric river of darkness, spreading supremacy

               of dead drop silence, the parliament of owls assemble in the dense, dark groves,

               hooting the mundane politics of the forest, deliberating on corruption, crimes,

               traps of tyranny laid by the wily wolves, tyrannical tiger, sporty leopard and mighty lion.

               An old owl delving deep into past , shares the gory tales of these predators ,

               Their fights over territory , weak animals of prey, broad day’s booty, plundered hoards.

               Isolated owls swallowed by darkness, curse   in chorus nature’s politics, treachery

               Of ruining them of day vision , beauty of the woods, romance of the bright woods.

               A delinquent owl denounces nature’s treachery, jungle raj, justice lost to jugglers

               Of pelf and power, deadly snares and crafty mongers blind to truth and justice.

               His hoot of derision gets slanderous, communal, courting the dappled monopolies

               Of majestically maneuvering predators in sunny, silky days ,

               pitched against the falling canopies of darkness on the nocturnal parliament .

               As the hoots fuse with diatribe , the screech slowly  bleeds the stillness ,

               spitting venom against undemocratic , devilish practices, mighty masquerades

               dancing naked to the tunes of tyranny and fabricated  populist propaganda.

               Owls hoot swearing all agents of necromancy to unite, fight in aggrieved chorus,

               till the waves of change swirl to touch the strange, sulky shades of eternity,

               the lost hopes of murky past.

               The muffled voices melt into the unanimity of the hoots like blowing trumpets

              Through the nocturnal parliament,   condemning the  ways of God,  and animal

              To meek and weak ....       

                          CHANDRA SHEKHAR DUBEY.