The child weeps in a shackled village,Naked tears fall to the ground,
The cry unheard, not responded & growing frail
The red soil with corpses around.
They were here, the brutal murderers,
Of the war-torn country in the Dark Continent,
They know only guns, blood & diamonds
Making sure the bloody tears remain persistent.
Amputated men, raped women, maimed children
The axed limbs and the scarred mind
The conflict turning households into ghastly abaddon,
Its the diamonds the enslaved hands would find.
The nascent teenagers brandishing Kalashnikovs,
Homicides being their indoctrinated play
Mining the 'roughs' in the bloody river basins
The black-veined hands under the trigger lay.
Sierra Leone, Angola, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Congo
Nebulae of man's unquenchable thirst for 'the stone'
Uncut they occur but through the country's fabric they cut,
The helpless child's tears harden into love's material epitome...
(In memory of the thousands of innocent people massacred & crippled by the civil wars in Africa during 1990s which gave rise to the infamous trade of 'Blood Diamonds')
8 comments:
Good!!!
Good one.. but I like the one about the suicide bomber better.
hey thanks gauri, yeah suicide bomber was destined for an awful end... my dark mind gaining some brownies over the other!!!
btw, ur blog is not accessible..its telling me to sign in..when i sign in, it says u don't have the invitation to view the page or something..
'Uncut they occur but through the country's fabric they cut,
The helpless child's tears harden into love's material epitome...'
Mindblowingly Awesome!
Conjures up images of the movie 'Blood Diamond' in front of my eyes...imo, this is ur best poem I've read till date...and I hvn't read such emotive yet crisp ending
lines for quite some time now...
U r really writing well, Mihir...I don't hv da right 2 say this, but....Keep it up!
hey thanks viraj,
on second thoughts... those were the punchlines of the whole poem infact! even i liked them after i completed the whole poem. Was thinking for quite some time to provide a fitting yet contemplative ending to the last stanza...and then those lines struck me!
I am glad that i could virtually construct 'Blood Diamond' again in front of ur eyes..
Its the readers & comments like yours which further motivate to keep improving with each blog & poem. Thanks buddy!
That's a nice poem. But it lacked the sentiment of pointing fingers at those who stand, watch, lament and forget, in some ways - us. I would have ended the poem with these 2 lines:
Ticking landmines, hungry bullets - daily warzone reports,
But its just another news flash before weather, after sports.
A similar matter-of-fact comment is made by Maddy Bowen, the character who plays a journalist in the movie Blood diamond, reflecting her disdain towards the audience of her own work.
Re-read the poem. You do have a way with words and hitting the right note when it comes to making the reader see what you want him to see. "The black-veined hands under the trigger lay." - that's a beautiful flight of imagination, even though it is rooted in harsh reality.
Mihir the more i read this poem the more i appreciate it. Though i haven't seen this movie, I am now eagar to see it with you.
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