A Mockery of Civilization

(An Apostrophe to the Bird)

O winged sentinel of the skies,

Perceivest thou not the dolorous firmament?

Doth not the noxious air offend thy senses!

Laden as it is with the metallic stench of blood?

Dost thou not discern the oppressed ones’ wails!

Lamentations of the vanquished everywhere,

The echoes of despair? In your air,

Canst thou draw breath in this stifle ether!

Where fire devours and shameless humanity drowns,

Where gunpowder lingers like a foul incense,

And the orchestration of ordnance,

Conducts a requiem for the innocent?

What cunning masquerade is this!

That the world—

Though witness to carnage unremitting—

Persists in its chosen ignorance?

O what ignominy, what moral destitution!

Day upon day at the horizon of life,

The lives of tender souls are extinguished,

The architecture of dreams reduced,

Barbarian cultured artists bombard to rubble thrice,

The past lies desecrated as present is bleeding,

The future shrinks in hand of mock civilization,

In what epoch have we awakened!

That calls itself enlightened!

Yet gorges on destruction?

Amidst what specters of men do we reside!

Whose hearts beat yet feel not,

Whose eyes see yet shudder not?

Is humanity but a relic!

Its conscience embalmed in silence?

Are we not complicit in our apathy!

Witnesses to atrocity,

While proclaiming innocence?

The presses are shackled,

The airwaves curated to convenience;

Truth lies buried beneath curated narratives.

O avian observer,

Take wing and seek the forsaken,

Do any among them still draw breath!

The children who once laughed beneath a gentler sky?

Will any survive this architecture of annihilation?

Perhaps it is thy cry,

And not man’s feeble supplication,

That may yet pierce the vaulted heavens,

And awaken divine retribution.

For humankind has faltered—

Its prayers desiccated,

Its soul enfeebled,

We are the living interred,

Our moral faculties ossified.

______________ 

Published under International Cooperation with "Sindh Courier"