These past few days, I’m thinking a lot about the reality of a nation, and time and again I’m coming back to the idea of a nation. I talk to people who love this country - possibly can die for it - but when questioned about the state of the nation, are either heartbroken, broken, or ready to break something.
There’s an atlas of indignation inside them and they follow its contours whenever the country is discussed. The atlas has only troughs and heights. But the tops are reached with difficulty and ra...
These past few days, I’m thinking a lot about the reality of a nation, and time and again I’m coming back to the idea of a nation. I talk to people who love this country - possibly can die for it - but when questioned about the state of the nation, are either heartbroken, broken, or ready to break something.
There’s an atlas of indignation inside them and they follow its contours whenever the country is discussed. The atlas has only troughs and heights. But the tops are reached with difficulty and rarely, and they languish in the valley of their anger and despair. They conceive of the entirety of a nation’s complexity in a few algorithms of politics and society. Their mood is driven by the headlines, and the headlines are driven by the nature of the publication they read, and the publications are driven by what is most sensational on the day.
Regardless, our hearts are broken every morning.
Even as we breathe it’s air, and hum it’s tunes, even as we transverse the streets which we love as our own back door, and spend an evening with those who give meaning to our existence, we focus on our idea of what we think is happening to the country and hate half its politicians , and more debilitatingly, half its people.
Who are we judge? Who are we to judge people? Anyone as deeply flawed as we are, anyone with the prejudices we carry inside of us, is in no position to cast aside the belief systems of the other half. For in doing so, we are compromising the diversity of thoughts and beliefs of a mass of our brethren, we are rejecting them not for their humanity or generosity but because of what they believe in politically.
There are some wrongs, which are in the realm of black and white. But others are our ideas of situations and people. Nothing more nothing less. All we need is a quietude and a question, to reach out, to reach in. And then to walk side by side, comfortable in the knowledge that we both believe what we do, and are still terrific people to know.
The day we find our bridges over our most deep-seated resentments, we are on the way towards finding our nation’s true DNA and not get lost in our idea of what it is.
If you liked this poem, consider listening to these other poems on the triumph & tragedies of a nation:
- Blood & Light in the War Zone
- Sounds of Living & The Dead
- Crimson Flowers in Jallianwala Bagh
Follow me on Instagram at @sunilgivesup.
Get in touch with me on uncutpoetrynow@gmail.com
Subscribe to my incandescent and poetic newsletter The Uncuts here - https://theuncuts.substack.com.
The details of the music used in this episode are as follows -
Music: Gracias by Sascha Ende
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/260-gracias
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://www.sascha-ende.de
Music: Farm [full version] by Alexander Nakarada
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/8206-farm-full-version
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com/
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