October 2005 Poem by Muhammad Shanazar

(The Earthquake in Pakistan)

The massive blunders evoke the massive waves,
Of wrath that push the inhabitants to the graves;
The faults of kings fall upon the heads of subjects,
The cottages and the palaces, their ferocity raves.

Ah! What a horrible devastation eyes have seen,
The sepulchral cries shook the spheres between,
The earth, and sky; the nation has no stock of tears,
To make the pangs wash, to make the breasts clean.

The villages, the towns, the cities have been raved,
Preyed upon; ravaged and razed as the Will craved,
They have become an extended theatre of tragedies,
Time differs not, ripe or unripe, paved or unpaved.

The valleys, the green slopes and the rising peaks,
Where upon the life laughed with the shining cheeks,
And smiled with the sweet curves upon the rosy lips,
How sooner laughter changed into inaudible shrieks!

Ah! What terrible deaths occurred under the heaps,
Unendurable weights made sudden ferocious leaps,
The beams on legs, pillars on heads, earth in mouths,
How hastily they all moved to the black dismal deeps!

Humanity neither has enough waters in the eyes,
To meet the magnitude of calamity; in the breast sighs,
To consume pangs, and overflowing bereavement,
Nor rains have mourning drops reserved in the skies.


Oh! Mansehra, Balakot and Bagh, cities of the land,
Blood of your sons and daughters have made grand,
Each plain, each valley, each hill and each mountain,
Your dust, your rocks, your waters and your sand.

On your fate Nature Herself will ceaselessly lament,
Each year snowy flakes will fall to weep and repent,
The trickling tears will form ponds, rills and rivers,
Each year nightingales will sing elegies on the event.