Building Blocks by Abhishek Raol

The Bridge Builder

BY WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE

An old man going a lone highway,

Came, at the evening cold and gray,

To a chasm vast and deep and wide.

Through which was flowing a sullen tide

The old man crossed in the twilight dim,

The sullen stream had no fear for him;

But he turned when safe on the other side

And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,

“You are wasting your strength with building here;

Your journey will end with the ending day,

You never again will pass this way;

You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,

Why build this bridge at evening tide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head;

“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,

“There followed after me to-day

A youth whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm that has been as naught to me

To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;

Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”

                                      

Building Blocks

by Abhishek Raol

­The clanking of metal outside my room

And the rumbling of the ground, won’t end soon

Outside of the window next to my bed

The buildings birth won’t get out of my head

With all it’s drills, tractors, shovels and trucks

This noise is getting a little too much

And yet their work has just barely started

I can’t wait till they will have departed

Never is a morning when I wake up

No, I’m jolted out of bed by an earthquake

And so every day starts far from natural

I awaken to the sound of metal

Like a jittery machine being turned on

I drag myself down my bunk beds ladder

Brush my teeth, put on my clothes, grab my bag

And prepare myself for another day

All of my actions are against my will

Just like all the cranes, the trucks, the tractors

Controlled by the institutions desires

I’m not choosing, creating but obeying

Doing as I’m told, a slave to a grade

Only driven by productivity

In pursuit of my degree I lose sight

Of why I’m like a machine, so I complain

Again the next day when I look outside

And still all I notice or think about

Is how annoying this whole process is

Failing to see the beauty of that dirt

And the importance of the grinding noise

And why like that machine I’m on my grind

And I fail to see what is being built

And I fail to see the final product