On a busy day,
A floor unkept.
“What’s this woman doing?”
Said Mr. Baker Brett.

With no delay came she,
Hair running below her knees,
Cleant the place
And served him his morning tea.

The innocent kid
Stood in the aisle
With a face devoid of smiles
And fiery eyes.

The struggles of this woman,
He dare not say!
He made a fist.
When the clock struck eight,

He picked up his satchel
And looked at his sister play.
She received no formal education
And was to stay that way.

The struggles that she may face,
He dare not say!
He held his anger in,
And walked away.

Time will pass and
His beard will go grey.
To his curious daughter,
What will he say?

That she ought not
To get educated?
To be slave to an unknown man?
He contemplated.

Wild wild, rage. He must
Burst out today.
He shook off the bad dream
And so will they.

The young lad
Studies through the dawn.
Sifting through pages
across the morning yawn

Wearily, he gazes through his glasses.
He tumbles somehow through the day
Trying, to understand the
Kinetic Theory of Gases.

When, oh when? Will it end?
His onerous rite of waking up
And studying, despite
Being worn out on the inside,

Keeps him afloat among the wreck.
When the world is sinking
Into an abyss
He is happy to just, be.

Yes he is,
To be on the verge of sanity,
To barely hold on to humanity,
To wake up, every morning.

For the situation outside is far worse.
While men lose their loved ones and
Moan in grief,
Happy he is; to study, and sleep.

I strolled through
A library. T’was as abandoned
In the hands of time
As the proverbial Ozymandias.

It guarded a wealth of knowledge
Under each leather wrapped parchment
Like a pearl inside an oyster, just
Not under Adam’s ale.

One of them, as abandoned as the former
Stared at me, sitting in a
Coze on the floor.
‘Mommy!’ it cried

In such a desperate and helpless manner.
Instantaneously bonded I with it.
It was one akin to a mother and her child
Fragile, yet quite unbreakable.

All this in a book.
Words I have not to say
About that fervid day
And how etched it is.