A Prayer For The Dead And A Recognition That The Living Are Not Infallible Poem by Gayathri Seetharam

A Prayer for the Dead and a Recognition that the Living are not infallible
-Gayathri B. Seetharam
There are senseless tragedies
Resulting from pointless violence
Which owe their roots to
Hatred to a certain set of people
Or from a desire for domination
Or from and unexplainable want to hurt;

If the logic of it all eludes my mind
And although I love and treasure people
I support the death penalty
For the perpetrators of such crimes;

We were in New York in the summer of 2017
And visited the 9/11 memorial for all the dead victims
And there was an echoing silence for the dead of the World Trade Centre bombing
Reflected in the cascade of water from the recycling supply
And with the sun glistening through the wispy "curtain" of waterfall
I could not but help being overcome by sorrow
And I prayed for peace for the dead souls and happiness for the living;

There are more recent shocking massacres
Like the Toronto Danforth shooting,
The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting
The Quebec City mosque shooting
And the shooting in the Canadian Parliament
All of which resulted in death and injuries;

I must preserve the sentiments of the living
And say a prayer to the dead unjustly slain
For their lives ended abruptly without any prior signal
That they would be no more
No trace of their living, laughing, listening lives would remain
On this land of the living;

And I must mourn for the Holocaust victims
As I lament for all those dead in crimes, violence, accidents, natural disasters
People who tried to reach out for God
And God denied them a fair hearing;

There are some holocaust memorials
All beautiful monuments for those slain by the cruel hand of hate and injustice
But I shall dwell on the one in Berlin
Which has a green tree in front of the graves of the nameless dead
Because Berliners have to have a conscience
For they played a role in the ill-treatment and death of many Jews;

May peace prevail upon the tragically dead
And the unjustly killed
And all those suffering needlessly
Because God and I mean gods from all religions, and the powerful living
Have lost their quality of compassion or mercy;

If man and woman and the rest of humanity has to have a moral sense
Then they have to have the means
To give their inner soul and adjacent heart
The latitude to give into the generosity of their psyche
And hence I also pray for prosperity and wealth to all of us
With love in our hearts and life in our souls.

Acknowledgements:
1. Craig from Descriptionari
2. Wikipedia
3. Google Dictionary