Freedom
Rabindranath Tagore
Freedom from fear is the freedom
I claim for you my motherland!
Freedom from the burden of the ages, bending your head,
breaking your back, blinding your eyes to the beckoning
call of the future;
Freedom from the shackles of slumber wherewith
you fasten yourself in night's stillness,
mistrusting the star that speaks of truth's adventurous paths;
freedom from the anarchy of destiny
whole sails are weakly yielded to the blind uncertain winds,
and the helm to a hand ever rigid and cold as death.
Freedom from the insult of dwelling in a puppet's world,
where movements are started through brainless wires,
repeated through mindless habits,
where figures wait with patience and obedience for the
master of show,
to be stirred into a mimicry of life.
3 comments:
This strikes me as timely with what is happening politically in our country. I don't know if you meant it that way. So much of what we do and the decisions we make are made out of fear. Not just our country, but in our daily lives. I pray for freedom. We have our great freedom, I pray for freedom from my small fears and burdens.
And I missed commenting last week - Happy Birthday Thomas!
And Bonnie and Clyde? Too much!
Kris, when I first read this poem, I was reading it as an individual who wanted to stand up against the machine and not be afraid to do so. I thought it was interesting to read in Molly's post about the "cog in a machine" and though the poems are different, they do share the theme of resisting evil in all its subtleties. Thanks for your comment.
With freedom comes responsibility - and I think we (in general, as a people) have lost a working knowledge of responsibility. We expect someone to bail us out of every situation.
This poem reminds me of the book I read over the weekend - Nothing to Envy. I wrote a review of it on my blog. I think you in particular might enjoy the book because it is about ordinary people who lived in North Korea.
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