Struggle is the Alchemy of Life

History crowns the relentless dreamer.

One twilight, my father’s voice grew heavy—
"Son, poetry won’t barter for bread,
Look—your youth is ink spilled on the wind,
Half-gone, yet the world remains unfed."

The alley murmurs, sharp as scythes—
"Can a stanza mend a leaking roof?
Seven thousand buys no tomorrows,
Only yesterday’s reproof."

"Child, the soil scorns a poet’s hands,
They weigh men by callous and yield.
Stay rooted—don’t gulp the sky like rain,
Lest you starve with your harvest unpeeled."

I pressed my brow to his cracked palms:
"Father, I kneel to no man’s scorn,
Only to the tempest in my veins.
Wait—the harshest night births dawn.
Have you not seen? The eyeless trace firelight in the void,
And the maimed dance when flutes cry home."

"Ah, Baba, your worry is a fable—
Every brick claims it bears the wall alone.
But paths are woven by pilgrim feet,
And cowards die where seeds are sown."

Nothing was—still, Hope stood.
Nothing will be—Hope stays.
I sank in the void of my own making—
Had I not been, would Hope erase?

Struggle is the alchemy of life—
History crowns the relentless dreamer.