Poetry By Piyal Roy

Stigma

The voice that stays silent before injustice
I have cast away.
The eyes that have forgotten the storm’s wild rage
I turn from them, unseeing.
The tongue that no longer sparks the fire of defiance
I do not know it, nor do I wish to.

What use is breath if it cannot rise in protest?
We are not well.
Our joys lie buried in silence,
our quietest dreams left to wither in dust.
What use is toil if in the end,
no sky remains where we can lift our heads in pride?
Why is there no space left for us, no air to breathe?
We scour the earth for reasons to dream,
yet our hands gather only rust,
our eyes turn barren as deserts,
and our children avert their gaze, lost in the ache of unspoken grief.

We never wished to sell our dreams.
We never wished to bury our tenderness,
to smother our love.
We did not choose to beg,
to be ravaged, to be cast adrift.
We never wished for dawn to rise homeless,
for dusk to wander on weary, migrant feet.
Yet the bones of the world hold our shadows,
etched into its hollowed spine.
They brand us as outcasts, as threats to their order
a people to be purged by fire.
Our mourning pyres blaze in the alleys
while drums of exile thunder
Banish them. Erase them.

But my sleepless nights have taught me
to decipher the whispers of lost sailors,
to unearth the keys of broken locks.
Yes, I am judgmental
I pass my verdict on this wild, unraveling world,
its veiled cruelties,
its silent, bloodless wars.

Copyright@Piyal Ray