Like so many,
I have never struggled
To bring back youth that was lost,
For, I moved not from my childhood days,
So full of songs of innocence.
Peeping from the frames of an antique
Slow-moving dead past
With faded torments,
Self-indulgent pity,
I saw a toxic political era,
A sea of scandal,
Where leaders for life view state assets
As their own cash cows
And place gains in international banks
While their poor people starve.
From my river of silence,
I saw men and women,
Hearts parched up,
Sinking slowly in the mire of depression,
Brutalized and victimized,
Standing the test of time
In the world of collective tangling.
Playing with the butterflies,
In the grassy plains
With scent of morning shrubs,
Pursuing my dreams
In the world of Superman, Batman,
Green Lantern, Green Hornet,
Spider Man, all connected to green,
I got transported to time and space.
I again opened the window
Of my childhood days
And I saw the fury of aerial bombardments,
The endless treadmill of violence and war,
Seventy thousand men raped,
In a year in one land,
Three thousand lives lost in a single war,
Sirens wailing, women and children crying,
Babies fastened to the beaten
Leather breasts of their mothers.
I closed my window,
Never to open it again.
I talked to my Teddy Bears
And they cried for me.
They held me in their arms
And together, we cried.
They burst the boils in my heart
To drain the painful liquid away
While our ship cut
Through the waves of the night.
Pramila Khadun
An incisive and in many respects a forthright and visceral work dealing with the major themes and concerns.
Thanks a lot my dear Louis for this encouraging comment.Honestly speaking, you made my day down here in Mauritius.