War And Peace Poem by Ravi Panamanna

In the darkness of night
In the fading twilight
With a losing might
With a lowering sight

With a bundle of tears
As an embodiment of fear
With her kid, the dearest,
She hides in a forest
For the nightly veil to lift.

Guns make a whisker
Life is hard and precipitous.
Bloodhounds are wide awake
Her life is quite at stake.

She lurks among the shady wood-line
It is all an uncertain game.
In a moment she might perish
Over a wink everything could finish.

She is tethered, desperate,
Her kid might forever separate.
She hides behind a bush
Within her is a growing anguish.

She knows not the theories of war
She can only feel about the winking stars.
She knows not the theories of blasts,
But can only feel a feeding breast.

In the glimmering star-light
In the snarls of the barking world
She is tattered, in haze
She is making her way in haste.

Where is her searching covert?
Where is her final place to rest?
Where are the springtime birds gone?
In avarice and avenge, completely flown?

She is not angry with the clinking world
She is all but within a shrinking mold.
She passes into the night unknown, unsung,
A bundle and the kid, hanging over a sling.

In a trice she becomes a human race
In her tears I count countless refugees.
Their voices to humanity beg 'why so cruel
And make our life a pell-mell'?

The sky answer not their plea,
Their heart the winds carry across the leas.
But, in the cranking din drown their words
The world continues sharpening the swords.

Ravi Panamanna
29/11/1996
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