Bounden Duty

Bounden Duty

P K Routray

The tales of my grandmother

on ghost ghoul and monster

on demigods and divine beings

studed my childhood evenings.

Her tales tell to and fro these spirits fly

between the earth and the sky

at the horizon where they meet

in me peeped then a desire to achieve the feat

going to the Heaven at the horizon as per will

Remember I, the thoughts rendering the thrill.

Since then my search for horizon is actively on.

though my father tried to give me on it a conception

while on the river bank and the shore of the ocean

fingering to the far off distance where sets the sun

or birds flying in flocks at the sky-high vanish there.

To run to it alone, the curious child in me did not dare.

But with the flourishing wisdom, I knew a man can never reach it

but to rise high, the man stretches his horizon presumably to his benefit.

As a child my horizon was halfway on the adjacent river

to grownup man in me, it brought once a satiric laughter.

But a man’s bounden duty, he has forgotten

to the society within his childhood horizon

where he was born nourished and grown

by love, service, and sacrifice for a return

as fixed by the lord to sustain the creation

The aged invalid needs no robot but affectionate attention

The horizon is a concept on infinity and has no limit

Can the diminutive man ever fulfill the need of the infinite?

Limiting his horizon man should fix his ambition

so that his bounden duty to his society is not forgotten.

At the horizon move the divine beings also the demon

Man has to choose one side either go to hell or heaven.