Friday, December 17, 2010

Swapan Kole - Killed 15.12.2010

I have seen my streets
Now streamed with blood
And heard with fear
The tears that roll
Along the cheeks of orphaned souls
Or even worse, their parents lost.

Beyond the songs of blaring cars
Beyond the calm of cushioned rooms
Beyond the shops and malls and all that rush
What are the ghouls that stalk
My streets, my city, my state?

I have lost my subtlety and seek
A space to mourn in meaningful peace
From where our souls, battered and bruised
Must take to the streets
And cleanse it of filth
To restore to the hearts
That sanity and song
Which afresh must preach
The dignity of man.

3 comments:

Robert said...

After such knowledge,what forgiveness?Think now
History has many cunning passages,contrived corridors
And issues...
I often wonder,how would the Christ himself forgive in this era?

Abin Chakraborty said...

I wondered the same in 'Christmas Thoughts' a couple of years back, in the context of some other violence...

Amrita Dhar said...

The Dictators

An odor has remained among the sugarcane:
a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating
petal that brings nausea.
Between the coconut palms the graves are full
of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.
The delicate dictator is talking
with top hats, gold braid, and collars.
The tiny palace gleams like a watch
and the rapid laughs with gloves on
cross the corridors at times
and join the dead voices
and the blue mouths freshly buried.
The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant
whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,
whose large blind leaves grow even without light.
Hatred has grown scale on scale,
blow on blow, in the ghastly water of the swamp,
with a snout full of ooze and silence


Pablo Neruda