Poetry

Reuters photo

By

Sheshu Babu

Flowers of Blood

Once a beautiful garden flourished

Kashmir, ‘The Eden Garden,’ they said:

It had plenty of colorful flowers

Trees raised like Eiffel Towers

Many visitors used to come and go

While the flowers swung to and fro

Trees tilted in the gentle breeze

Beauty of the garden, nobody could squeeze

Once, two visitors with their henchmen rushed

From the opposite sides they pushed

Each other by the scuff of the neck

Shouting ‘this is ours, you go back!’

One of them wanted the resources

To benefit big blooming corporates

The other did not lag behind

With evil designs of communalism in mind

Nobody cared for the trees or flowers’ appeal

‘We want freedom -Azadi’, they cried with zeal

‘Leave us to our fate and we’ll progress

And work hard without any digress’

The trees cut; flowers splintered in mud

All colors vanished except that of red

Garden lost its beauty and looked dirty

No visitor expressed sorrow or pity

The visitors with their henchmen

Smashed trees to smithereens and pretty flowers ravished

The garden looked a terrible battlefield

With innocent corpses lying all over the field

The trauma continues with rising scuffles

Flowers nipped in the bud as air stifles

Trees remain precarious; not allowed to grow

Cruelty reigns supreme and humanity receives a death blow

Sheshu Babu

The writer from anywhere and everywhere is interested in the betterment of the whole world. Whenever the writer ponders on the question ‘who am I?’ He finds response from Bhupen Hazarika lyric (Bengali),’Ami ek Jajabor’ (I am a gypsy). 

Some works have appeared in Countercurrents.org, Dissidentvoice.org, Counterview.org, counterview.net, Velivada.com, etc.