Only a baby collecting seeds
From the heads of brown grass
With her little burnt fingers……
Beside the bush lying her mother
Open-mouthed and cold.
A fox was there and a vulture
And also an eagle on a leafless bough.
There were many rat holes yet they
Stared at the baby among the debris
And she got fear and called her mother.
But no one came out from the hut nearby
No hand descended from the sky to cross
The Jesus before resurrection or even after
Crucification; there was only a feeble voice
To sniff the smell of hunger and gunpowder.
The baby beckoned the sun to scorch her
But the sun had no power to give her heat.
Evening descended like a wild swan and
Sat on the rock where her father turned into
Pieces and became the soil of this universe.
Someone dropped a bomb in the distance
And a deep darkness engulfed the sky.
The baby climbed onto her mother’s breast
And hugged her; then she began to howl
An owl flew up over her head shading tears.
She woke up early in the morning smeared
With blood and saw the living shadow of her
Mother with a bowl of barley and a stick of
Lotus; she slowly deseeded the seeds from
The lotus to fill in every ditch of destruction
With her wail and thrust and innocent lost.
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Shyama Prasad Laha
Picture Nick Victor
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