A Serious Discourse

Master Showkat Ali

Long back Yeats talked Among School Children about
‘Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.’
I too had a chance to meet, while walking out
In the fields, with crops grown carpet green and heard
Two scarecrows just beginning to whimper
In pure sadness, reviewing the life of man.
As I had no answer ready to hamper
Their silent talk, about self-cursed man
Who hurries towards affliction every now and then,

Said the first one, beginning discourse about men:

“When like us once man was in tatters clothed,

Friendship, love, society had his garments been.
In rags half or naked full, never he loathed
Each other.”  “But now what a different scene
When he is in garbs full, animosity, hate, loneliness keen,
The maddening crowd; with suffering huge and bitty joy.”
Added the second one, not being serene.

Painful pleasure and sorrowful joy

Filled me in from top to toe.
And across the globe. ‘Malignant, ho!
Man has turned’, cries echo!

And I thought of my own native land

Along with other lands, therefrom ply
Screams, shrieks, shrills, strikes – grand
Buffeting the stony oppressors; who sly
Lives in pride or hate ‘as flies to wanton boys…
For their sport.’ and ‘Combat Terrorism’ the wordcraft
Or ‘White man’s Burden’, for acquittal and as toys
They takeover innocent mankind, kicking the haft
And brutally burdening the womb of humanity,
To deliver dragons, drones, and mother of bombs
To burn the heaven on earth and celebrate inhumanity.
I only heft, kept, wept and crept, craving for balms
While being lost in the inhuman mire
Missed the conversation, very dire.

There because of my deep sighs and sobs

The two reviewers of the Book of Man
Quivering silence, stopped, back on jobs.

But the flames of embarrassment in me, did they fan

With their last sigh, “Pitiable creator of ours- seriously ill
How lustfully you destroy yours
Life sustaining crop! While we still
In tattered clothes guard YOURS.”   

Setu, August 2017