War

In 1982, I was in high school and had just begun writing poetry and was discovering the magic of producing thoughts and ideas and sharing them with my friends who found it very boring. Anyway, around the same time, the news on all TV screens was filled with images of Israel's invasion of Beirut. The shocking images of dead and maimed bodies disgusted me, and I wrote this poem as a response to all that I saw.

Now that Israel has invaded Beirut again, I see the same familiar images occupying the TV screens, and though, I'm much older now, I feel, the same sense of disgust and revulsion all over again. Ofcourse, I need to clarify that I support neither Hizbollah, Hamas nor the Israeli army... my sympathy and support lies with the innocent civilians who have ended up being unwitting victims of this collective madness.

This is the poem I wrote back then, and sad to say, nothing much as changed in the intervening 24 years.

The little child silently
stretches its tiny legs
to crawl towards its mother,
sleeping on the innocent ground.

The mother is lying all alone
naked and helpless,
waiting for the Red Cross
to pick her up.

But the little child is thirsty
and parched,
and so crawling up
to her body
puts its mouth
on her breast:

but the milk isn't
there,

she is dead!