THE CHILDREN OF THE HEAVEN

Their mind is a filthy dump where
dreaming is dangerous,
Their body is a fetid rot where
loving is poisonous,
Their heart is a woeful dungeon where
lighting is spurious...

Innocent they are born -- unbias'd, unknown,
Neutral of themselves and their religion,
Neutral of separation and union,
Neutral of a Hindu or a Musalman...

They know not hatred, and know not anger,
Of sins and Satans they are unaware,
Cruelly yet they are born in the Nether.

For them, this earthly heaven turns a

Valley of Anathema
And hideous terrain hard-layered on the
majestic panorama;
Pines whistle not, livestock feed not,
and sing not the warblers;
Bloom not orchards, spreads not the musk,
and grow not conifers;
Lifeless are luxuriant flora, and
exotic fauna;
Flow-less are Jhelums, restless Dals,
snow-caps never luminant...

This is the land where Gods did wish to be born,
Where Mughals, Sikhs, and Royals felt re-born;
Now this's the land curses befall heavy and dry,
These tiny youngs on notice each heart will cry--

They're born to hear cries from explosion,
They're born to live with deprivation
Of parents, ration, and nutrition,
And languish in the Army prison
Or grow as the bombs in terror bastion...

From the dark of Hades of affliction,
From the abyss of ghastly subjection,
They see the flights of birds across the sky
And hear their chirps and cheers as they fly by,
They notice bold ascent of snowy crests--
Their blithely suckling the empyrean breasts.

Tears sable their stares, inconsolable they weep,
Into the yawn of pain the heart plummets deep,
Ceaselessly they relive horrors no help;
These human children of the Supreme's Fief...

The bites of creatures through the ghastly sleep, 

The eerie glows of night, and yelps, and beeps;
Ever on prowl the hunting eyes of death,
Sledgehammers over and landmines beneath...

In wants, of food, of sleep, of rapture,
With loads of hunger, trauma, and torture;
These kids are dreaden'd to perish
Or raised to kill, and die for devils...

This is their life that never bends along the bends,
This is their life that straightens not across the straights;
Trekking of rough meanderings falling down wide cliffs,
They're toss'd up, perpetually, between height and base
And condemn'd to the Heaven of Damnation endless...      

                                                       -- N P SAMAL