Many lives

I want to live, as a ponderous child
slept inside
crumpled hands on the Mongolian Steppes,
watching the morning sun graze
his grandmothers eyes,
and yellow the grassy mounds
on which sheep spread out
like dots on a Seurat,
and be lullabied by whistling winter winds,
carrying messages of war
the Khans would once sing.

I want to know,

that Georgia, where land was free
but people slaves,
the brutality that wilted lives,
know the men who thought this okay,
and then those that suffered---their tales,
their yearnings,
and that moment of elation, in her eyes,
when she first smeared a velvety red
on her luscious black lips,
and felt utterly gorgeous.

And if only I could live
atop girders held by cranes,
many hundreds of stories high,
peeking dizzyingly straight below
into an Indian megalopolis,
hidden under fog,
punctured like needles,
by megaliths of ambition,
a mirage over the misery,
if only I could cherish the moment
whence I knew my child was destined,
a different fate,
and the comfort it gave
my own dying dreams.

I wish I had more lives to live,
and some of them,
as an urban dweller in New York city ,
one window among many,
spilling yellow light onto bricks of red,
ensconced in the human menagerie,
foisted forward by coffee and time,
and lonely nights spent gazing
at TVs telling tales of storied lives,
living anonymously.   

Kartiek Agarwal.