AMERICA – 1978
America
And your trillion-dollar Economy
And your FM stereo
And your serpentine highways of lonely people
Slanting westwards into the setting sun
Leave me alone
I am one of the starving millions of India
Who you’re mommy asked you to sacrifice
Your Candy for
I came because
This was the land of Greatness and Charisma
Of James Dean and John Kennedy
And my brother who listened to Glen Miller and found his Soul
I came to breathe your air
Eat the salt of your earth
And build great buildings in praise of all you were to me
But you have presented me with your soul-less landscape
Your form-letters your form-experiences and your form-civilization
You have presented me only with people
Whose hearts are lost on your highways
And your abysmal wheels of progress
You have forgotten the helplessness of burning children
In your flash-fire experiences
Of Opulence, TV Westerns and Dow Jones
You only serve to numb me now, America
Till I will also begin to chant
Like a new being whose father is forgotten
‘Think of the starving millions of India
My act of contrition will put another man on the Moon’
One day I will unknowingly be speaking in this strange idiom
And somewhere in the dimming recesses of my memories
A flickering fire will finally die
And I who was so close to starvation and death
Will think only with revulsion and fear
And not sorrow
Of dirt, flies and men
Lying dead from thirst in parched fields
And stop eating candy to save my soul
Sahadev Chirayath wrote this poem in May of 1978 and lives in Buffalo, New York now. He is a Structural Engineer and has spent time with Engineers without Borders in Andhra Pradesh.
