In The Dark Room

The madwoman in the dark room
Watches spiders in the corner
Spin their webs
To snare
Dreams

Dreams of freedom, half the world away
Or in the street outside the window,
Or in the next room.

Dream of the girl running in the grass
Laughing with the joy of life
Dream of the boy who looks at the world
To see what he can do for it
Not what he can get out of it.

Dream of the man and the woman
Of a life spent well,
Of a life
Usefully lived.

Dreams of gracious aging
In happiness.

The spiders snare those dreams
The woman watches the spiders

And tries not to think of blood and pain
Death and rape and starvation
She is a dreamer too

Like me, like you
She believes that world could be
The world of dreams.

No wonder she's mad
No wonder they call her mad
No wonder she sits in the dark room
And watches the spiders snare those dreams.

Copyright B Purkayastha 2011