The Second Visit (After the Nuclear War)
Oh! Where have gone children, men and women,
The fair featured descendants of Adam and Eve,
I might have come on some disaster-prone planet,
With grim sooty mountains, sterile barren plains,
The treeless valleys extend before my amazed eyes.
Oh! It is the same spot, I vividly summon up,
Though deformed, distorted with horrible looks.
It is the land where the shepherds grazed,
Their sheep, goats and cows from morn to eve.
These were the farms where lush wheat swayed,
And butterflies hovered over the sweet-scented,
The yellow blossomed amphitheatre of sarsoon 1.
The rustic damsels singingly weeded the farms,
Gathering herbs to nourish the bleating goats.
This is the dry banyan tree stands like a ghost,
Where at noon in summer we all took rest,
In its cool shade and played hide and seek,
The older men played cards sitting in circles.
Amid the chirping of sparrows, crowing of crows,
Cooing of doves, and transporting songs,
Of the nightingales and seasonal cuckoos.
Oh! Who are these who drag the bodies,
Like reptiles remotely resemble the human race,
Hairless heads, faces without beards and moustaches,
Shaved brows, sans lashes beady gummy eyes,
The bag-like loose bellies fall on the knees;
Flexible noses hang like lurking beaks.
Arms like jointy-sticks with overgrown hands,
Legs like thick bendy rope made of black polythene.
Here is the rivulet where along with the age fellows,
We took bath in the opaque, muddy water of Saawun 1,
Now I see sitting in lines along the grassless banks,
The post-war generation, outcome of devilish intellect,
Pounce on the crabs, toads and frogs when they
Up rise from the water and some breathless chase
The rodents when they come out of their holes.
And chatter like the swarm of cackling wild-goose,
When the hunter appears from behind the rock,
And with precision points the hunting gun at them.
poem by Muhammad Shanazar
Added by Poetry Lover
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