Live to Tell

If you live to tell your tale
Will you
Let the scars show?
Will you
Let the pain and hurt
All of the people from
the unleavened past
Not so kind or good to you
Will you let them go
At last?

Or recite the litany of woes
And invoke the endless times
They committed thoughtless spiteful cruel crimes
Against them will you raise the flag
Black and barren, horrid corrosion's rag?

Or can you maybe
Forgive,
To forget the pain?
Perhaps you might not
Extract revenge
But simply learn
To live again?
Only because
You said goodbye,
Goodbye and god bless
I will not die!

Just because you cursed me
Ignored my muted cry,
Look again!, look well,
Because of pain
I am hammered from fiend fires of hell
And fine beaten into gold
Through stress by strain.

And now am I a sheet of music plain
Elemental
A veil of endurance
Into horrizons endless
Beyond your timid ken.

Still I live and sing
In still depths
of bottomless pools of pity,
And drink deep from
Crystal fountains of ethereal
Clarity
And inhale purity from pyrrhic
Sacrifices
Willingly made and bravely paid.

I am sacred and divine
My heart lit up with dreams
Devotional bliss in gallant stream
Flowing through in a gush of stubborn hope
I am
Neither blasphemy nor infamy
Neither heretic nor haggard witch
But the pale reflection of sun that  gropes out to reach
Stillest deadwaters of murky ditch.
I reflect the Seeker
One who sends out such
Splendor of Light to shine
All Nature proclaims
A friend of mine.
So loving a gift,
Is light and hope
None may disown
Its certitude.

If my life could be a tale
That you choose to read
Hold my scribbling hand
Let me lead
But let deepest love for you
my fellow beings
And gratitude and joy be guide
To the song I sing.

For hate dies lonely
And love lives
Marble monumental glorious song
That sanctifies both beloved
And he who gives.

(c)  Amrita Valan 2016