Inequation

This is the time of the year
when you begin to add up
how much you've earned
and how much you've lost.

How much pain you've been able to
imbibe, how much blood you had to shed.

This is the time of the year
to recall that summer evening
when the sky bled from its raw wound,

And you were also bleeding profusely,
nails being pierced into your sentience -

Do you remember the crossing
where you forgot your destination,
where you had asked a crippled man
about the way to the nearest inn

And the way his wise eyes had glittered
as he told you to retrace your steps?

And do you remember how you felt
in that roadside coffee shop
when you discovered there wasn't enough money
left in your pocket?

Did you, at that very moment, think of Gregory
and his million pound note, and his mumbled words,
being unable to produce ‘anything smaller’!

The credits and debentures hang
in either side of a weighing machine,

Do you not realize
you have yet again
stubbornly tried to balance

a simple inequation.