The Shepherd

The Shepherd

Just at the age of five,
Just barely able to receive instructions
But without the benefit of understanding
The consequences of my own actions,
I was summoned for an awesome task,
Equivalent to that the Lord - being a shepherd.

But unlike the Lord mine would have had be fraught

With insurmountable faults.

My tending of cattle,
From dawn to dusk,

Seven days a week
In weather conditions

Sweltering hot or bleak

with no break in sight

Year in year out,
Rather than being sent to school.

Like the good Lord I shepherd all year round,
With a little lunch pack,

Wrapped in a sack,

Slinging on my back,

Though at times I had ran out of luck
Leaving me to forage
Under the trees what drops
From the birds’ beaks.

I scramble through the dell
And groped through the dale
Up and down the treacherous side of the hills
To the open field
Running in circle
With the little legs of a child.
Trying to rescue exhausted heifer
From the lustful prurient bulls
Who seemed determined to lure, if you will,
Even at the expense of breaking each other’s neck
The back of the heftier,
To rule her rump
For sexual pleasure.
All these said, when winter came
I had a mixed feeling.
The liveliness of all creatures
Busy all over - under the water,
On land and in the air -
The gentleness of the weather
And the green lash - the grounds that covers;
It filled my heart with joy
Till this very day the memory I tremendously enjoy.
But if you flip the other side of the story
A terrifying record is still imprinted in my memory.
Summer was not only booked for joy

But it was also as time to cry.

As a defenceless child

Serving beyond a call of duty

The sky opens up

When I least expect,

And pelted me with hail,

And doused me with fusillade of torrential rain
This child could barely withhold.
And there was no place to hide.
Wet, the rags stuck to the skin,
Cold to the bone,

And yet I had to keep running

Rather than seeking a cave to shelter,
To save the heifer,
That ran straight yet into a danger -
From the bulls to be spared,
Of the Wadi that had now turned
In to a dancing floor of diluvian murky water.
Alas, bashed and tumbling, she was swept away
And I stood lost, remember that fateful day.
I negotiated with myself either to follow the same way
Or go wherever the road led for good and stay away.

So it was then at the age of five
I swear that I would retire
And never to have to work again
Through out the rest of my life
For any reason even financial gain.
For all I saw as a child
Work was nothing but pain.

Many thought enter my mind
For a mind of a child such that of mine

Which option to follow, was difficult to find.

At one point a thought emerged
At five going six of age
I made a pledge.
I should some how learn to read and go to college.
Rather than talking animals’ language,
No gooder stuck in this dull village.

For I knew there was trouble
At home I could not really handle.
Having caused to suffer,
the lose a heifer
the family’s financial buffer
I decided to run away to the city
I had heard too much publicity,
Of its spatial beauty,
The schools and the universities
Unlike the rigid rural its flexibility
And the abundance of freedom of opportunities.
But as I ran,
Never did I know,
I had in me,
Carried my worst enemy.
Fate followed me to the bitter end
And forced me to take up a job
To keep at bay hunger
Before it got me drop died.
Ever since sixty-five years to-date
I have been doing this job
Cleaning windows of a university,
As a child I pledged I would be in unity

And that was how close I came to my dream in reality,
Not out of choice but dictated by necessity.
Now I am sixty-five
I have done nothing but
Work almost all my life.
The trouble and I am worried a bit
I may be unable to do the thing
I said I hate to do when I was child
Before I got in the inevitability caught -
A child born into poverty.