SHOUTING SILENCES

When words fail,
Silences prevail.
From the closet of their deathliness
They carp aloud, they shout aloud.
Like the sunlight prevails,
Through the thickness of the cloud.

Oh when the worlds clashed for space,
When the ‘rulers’ struck greatness.
Or when the fuehrers salvaged their grace.
When the Generals slayed to impress.

There lay a man strayed and broken,
And sat an infant dumb with the Atom.
Looking at the same dead woman
Who fed him through her very shattered bosom.

Oh yes! They did not speak
For around them was a corpse-crowd.
But their silences prevail through the closet of deathliness
They carp aloud, they shout aloud.
Like the sunlight always prevails
Through the thickness of the cloud.

When the car careened through the darkened road,
And the inmates scratched the hapless soul.
Bouts of lust wherever they hoard
Some soul-turned-object pays the toll.

Then after the demons had quenched their thirst
The ‘soul’ was tossed out like a candy-wrapper.
She lay in the dustbin in squalor and dirt,
Only to be scratched more by the courts and paper.

Oh yes! She was mum.
But the inmates were free and they frowned
Her silence still scares, it still prevails through the closet of deathliness.
It carps aloud, shouts aloud.
Like the sunlight always prevails,
Through the thickness of the cloud.

When man became the man of progress and money,
He searched for space in the nature’s stronghold.
Nature’s ample lap was big for his need-puny
But too miniscule for his greed untold.

‘He came, he saw, yes he did conquer.’
He bombed and charred the orchards into nothingness.
He incised and bruised the womb of his ‘mother’.
He hemmed her bosom like a tress.

But mom kept mum! Never cried, just sighed.
Not an anguish in her love.
Loved her mutilator as her child.
Her tears were warm, still calm as a dove.

Mother nature suffers in misery galore
But in his ‘teak-finished cabins’, man sits proud.
Her silence still prevails through the closet of deathliness.
It cries aloud, it shouts aloud.
Like the sunlight prevails,
Through the thickness of the cloud.

The foetus was smashed on the floor
SHE looked at the doc without a word.
Round blue eyes directed at him.
The silence stabbing like a sword.

The widow whose voice was jailed
When she heard of her man’s murder
Or the Holocausts that make the soul shudder.
Such silences shout, such silences prevailed.

When words fail,
Silences prevail.
From the closet of their deathliness
They carp aloud, they shout aloud.
Like the sunlight prevails,
Through the thickness of the cloud.
     

Kanav Gupta
 BA {Hons.} English 
  Kirori Mal College