The streets are not painted with graffiti.
Angry banners do not fly against the sky.
People do not walk across cities, rallying voices
Against the incarceration of a young man.
They have hired clever masons to build walls around him.
But he spreads outside those walls.
They talk about him in quiet corners
And it spreads like a whisper that cannot be silenced.
“Where is he?” they ask,
They who have made him prisoner to their fears.
“Why do we hear his voice beneath our throne
And in the quietness of our homes?”
He has become the voice among voices,
He has become the anger that lurks among the silenced,
He has become the love that lingers beyond fear,
He has become the hope that teeters on the edge of a prayer.
He has become larger than his name, Umar Khalid.
He has multiplied beyond a number in a prison.
He has entered into the crevices of our remembering.
He has become the unease of our present.
Those walls are searching for him.
They were built to enclose him.
But he is no longer within them.
He is prowling in the streets,
He is trespassing into dreams,
He is stoking the embers of love
In the winter of hate.
(The author of this poem is from Mangalore University)