‘Through an Open Graveyard’ by Satyananda Sarangi

Through barren fields, beside the ruins of man,
The sunlight hardens stains of blood and gore;
Macabre deeds that years ago began,
Their horror still would haunt forevermore.

This open graveyard ’round whose ghastly dread,
The trembling air is scared and scarcely moves;
A mother somewhere weeps for children dead,
Her piercing laments etch the deepest grooves
On timeless, sapphire earth in muddy red;
But gone to death are those she dearly loves.

As eyes and sight, as shining stars and night,
As love and faith divine do coexist;
Their cheerful tones that set her face alight
Now slip away as silt from gripping fist
Of Time, and yet at hours, would flash so bright
As sun that hides and seeks through clouds and mist.

There, sobs in gasping breaths, a little girl
Whose thumping heart so naive, ne’er understands
The worldly truths, the might of pains that whirl
And take the monstrous shapes from desert sands;
Her every gushing tear is like a pearl,
And lids, the oyster beds from treasured lands.

Perchance beside her father’s carcass still,
With ardent hope, she holds his fingers cold,
But who would now her childish whims fulfill?
For like the potter’s wheels cannot remould
The lumps of clay, reversed is not the rill;
He’s gone for whom the bells of death have tolled.

Fanatic heads that breed satanic brains,
Possess the savage hands with icy ire;
And not a tinge of guilt nor fear remains
Whilst setting temples and sacred shrines afire;
As captives bound to hatred’s clasping chains,
Their evils taint the highest heaven’s spire.

As one by one, I pass cadaver rows,
Some traced by kin, some others lie unclaimed;
The grieving crowd, a plaintive song compose
For fallen martyrs, both obscure and famed;
The troops of Satan strike with sabre blows
In form of suicide bombers, honed and tamed.

A prayer, thus escapes my quiv’ring lips
That terror dies a thousand deaths and more;
May sparks from ruins of man, its wrath eclipse
As sunlight hardens stains of blood and gore.