The Children Of Gaza
A Blank Verse
A Blank Verse
Thundering in the sky, then rain of missiles...
See how they are fleeing arms outstretched
Like the broken wings of storm-hit birds,
And see their faces white with fear and hunger
And hear their throbbing voice of pain and loss...
Over their head, the sky's no kites, no clouds,
But fire and fire amidst engulfing smoke,
And they are running like the Napalm girl
From Vietnam or standing frozen, like
The standing boy from Nagasaki, before
Their elders who are whispering in fear
Or staring helpless in the gauge of Death...
They are the hapless children caught in the war zone.
They have no home, no school, no ground of freedom,
But sole refugee camps and hospitals
If marching death has spared them of their life.
They hear not bedtime tales but sirens of death.
For them, the school bell sounds not, but Death knells...
The rhythm of their lonesome life vanishes
Like breath on glass; beneath the fading light
Does fall their evening games to dreadful game
Of war the maniacs play sans rules or rhymes.
It's no more snatching 'way from them their toys
Or knees with scraping wounds that meant them violence
What now means their amputated limbs,
As their nights and days do wrap them up
Untended, hungerstung, diseased, decrepit;
Crushed by danger, trauma, pain and torture;
In severe want of food, of sleep, of rapture...
But destructions have been left unleashed.
They have nowhere on earth to get, but run through
A maze as streets have twisted into rubble.
In utter chaos, afraid and brok'n are they running...
Everything looks to them upside down in
Their world of mangled metal, rubbled ground...
They bear the bites of bugs if fell asleep
In the wakeful night, unquiet by guns,
Tanks, artillery, and aircrafts and drones.
With the nagging pains of their own body,
Ceaselessly they relive disquiet and horror
Of eerie glows of night, and yelps, and beeps;
Ever on prowl the hunting eyes of death;
Into the yawn of pain, their heart plummets deep.
Inconsolably do they weep, and sometimes
They stare on -- gazes that convey no meaning.
Their life does never bend along the bends
Nor straight does it proceed along the straights.
Up the rough meanderings, down the cliffs
Are they constantly tossed up, high and low...
They are ignorant, guiltless, known to none;
Have no state, no god, no friend, no foe;
And know not hatred, know not spite or ego;
Of sins or Satan's, they are unaware;
A Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian --
They are none, and none is their religion;
Untaught are they of union or separation...
But their little world has turned a hell
Where Sunbirds sing not, bloom not jasmines, poppies,
Grows not grass, and sounds not whistling Cypress,
And dead are lushgreen flora, teeming fauna....
These are the children of the war-hit Gaza.
Their heart is filled with woeful dungeon where
Lighting is spurious, body a fetid rot
Where love is poisonous, and danger rattles
The filth-infested mind if dared to dream...
To be continued...
©️ N P Samal
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