How long are we going to be

Witnesses of monumental tragedies?

How long will we live with hearts

Where hate keeps welling up?

 

We do not need an aerial survey

To see how people live miserably

Cramped in mega cities.

We do not have to use binoculars

To see the gruesome scenes

Of battlegrounds cropping like mushrooms

Submerged in a cacophony unpleasant.

 

I look at the swirling clouds

And think of the saga

Of rise and fall of humanity.

I say to myself,

‘Never had man sunk so low.’

And the bees and the butterflies reply,

‘Yes, never so low, sadly enough.’

 

I descend into the vortex of my depths

Where the vast terrains of life

Look so small and men are reducrd

To the height of my forefinger.

Daniel Defoe must have landed

In this mysterious place, I’m sure.

 

And these men and women live so happily,

With no negative thoughts adding power

To the spirit of darkness,

Ever ready to damage and destroy.

Never are they forlorn or weighed down.

No revenge, no witch-hunt,

No punitive or bitter recriminations.

 

I feel their imaginative verve,

Their poetic prowess, all serenely palpable.

I sense their recognition and their adulation,

Their smiles, their love, their endurance,

Their visceral and evocative work,

All delving and resurfacing like dolphins.

 

Like pods, beautiful thoughts

Burst in my mind.

I think of the gravitational system

Between our planet and the sun,

Where all riches sink down

And what flies with our flying souls

Is love,

For only love

Can defy the law of gravity

And fly with wings wide open.

 

Pramila Khadun