Living In Violence Poem by Hayat Saif

[Vivek has left]
[Here was once a dancing ocean]

Rising up dropp by dropp from the ocean
Water comes down in torrents form the mountains
Though the plateau on the plains
Gushing forth and tearing down the ramparts of stones,
Mountains break, continents are torn apart
In the rotation of the earth
Permafrost weighs down on the earth
Glaciers move and crush the earth
In huge powerful incandescent thrusts.
Blue flames rise up in deafening electrical clap of thunder
And then Noah's flood takes hold of the earth
An undying life begins to quiver
Civilization starts
Along the distant shores
White crested waves break
In long winding garlands of white sandalwood paste forms.
In diligent labor and devouring dreams blunders
Trials and errors and endless curiosity
Even truth and beauty begin to sprout
Inventions and technology convey to people
The meaning of good living
Even the outer space opens its doors to man;
But it seems after the passage of quite a long time that
In the genes something of the Dinosaur still remains dormant.
In visions and oracles, loves and sacrifices
History is made,
And yet at times all get destroyed bye violence and war
The Third World is devoid of'the third eye'
Only an arrogance and destructive mood crushes all hopes
While innumerable mouths wait to be fed
Any upward move quickly gives way to despair
Virtue and sin and the lure of the world hereafter
Seem irrelevant when an all-consuming hunger abounds
And in the spring dull roots are stirred and the earth
Suddenly bursts forth in a thousand blossoms and laughter
In the early hours of dawn the call for prayers
Echoes in the misty air
And chant of hymns from temple wafts in gentle wind

In epidemics and draughts, in flood and bereavements
The wheel of time haltingly moves round
And violence throws its arrows
Towards the streets and meadows
And lonesome houses,
In cyclones and tidal waves
The shoreline is lined with corps,
And yet even in that turbulence some fortunate
Few skillfully remain in treetops
Untouched unblemished.
A smooth leisurely life beckons them on
The rising middle class joins the race
And unabatedly build high-rises
And in geometric progression
Environment gets exterminated.

In hypocrisy and reckless destruction
Nothing remains sacred,
Will there be a final extermination before absolution?
Conscience, there fore exits from the scene;
Once we had a state of deep meditation
We had translucent empathy and simple joy
We had a beautiful vision raising its head towards the sun
We had a state of peace and beatitude;
But all those have sunk into a dark abyss of remorse
Remorse and no repentance
For our hands are smeared with patricidal blood
And our hearts are heavy with fratricide
Our faces are flushed with suicidal incest
Are we, thus condemned to suffer
A suffocating solid darkness?
Will He come to absolve the deep-rooted
Ancient sin on us?
Will He recreate man again in His own image?
Man appears to be even inferior to beasts these days.
Nothing human remains sacrosanct anymore
When freed of this known surroundings a few amongst us,
Repeatedly vent their impotent rage
On the insurmountable wall
That separates this existence from the other,
They, for the time being, do not find any watershed there.
They cannot look forward to
A peaceful deep lagoon of calm sleep.
There is no love left for them, and yet
The love of some men lives on, forever;

Therefore now finally shedding every bondage
If not all at least a few of us shall march along
The illuminated path of ultimate freedom
And slowly disappear in the distance.