Reason

Blasting children into smithereens, raping women  as they dare  step on the street,Strutting the neighbourhood in menacing heat

Badri Raina Delhi

Reason is a thin thing,
Like vein of gold among mounds
Of  accreted  rubble and hardened rock
In the interstices of habitual brain.

Alas, the so resistant fear of overthrow
Often turns what little grain there be to dross.

Yet, when nations go kaput, they turn to gold;
Not  so we humans.  We sell our gold

To glittering merchants of pelf, prejudice, profit,
And  blood-dripping  superstitions untold.

Unlike currencies of the day, now of value,
Now of  worthless content, gold  holds

To its sheen and substance, beyond the rust
Of calculation; as does reason,
If only  we had the imagination.

Unreasons of the moment dance,
Amid the advances  that bear no question,

Blasting children into smithereens, raping
Women as they dare  step on the street,
Strutting the neighbourhood in menacing heat.

Like some hidden god, defeated
By her own creation,
Reason   withdraws its current into
Some hidden pool, leaving unreason
To occupy  nursery and school.

Among the day’s  wise men, reason
Looks on , content to be the persistent fool.