Bangladesh Cyclone Poem by Praveen Kumar In Shobha Priya

Tall walls of water
In the fierce night of the screaming winds
Broke into god-forsaken Bangladesh;
The destructive dance of the killer gales,
The sweep and roll of the mountainous water
In unending roar of the nature's fury
Struck the land
Like the death's wanton game,
With bloated carcasses of men and cattle,
Of hapless babies and shattered mothers,
Scattered in heaps
Like plague-infested rats
In fields, streets, rubbles and gutters.


Blown-off roofs, Collapsed walls,
Upturned trees and ruined crops,
Not a life that could save itself!
Not a structure that stood itself!
All blown and rolled in watery mass
That still groped like esurient death,
Still blood-thirsty,
Still, for more lives;
Death, misery, fear,
Disease and hunger
Filled the air,
A hope for future
And instinct to survive
Fought on the ground, a losing battle.


No warmth anywhere,
No smile anywhere,
No love and hate,
No pride or kindness;
Common sorrow flattened all,
Like the fall of night on a desert tract,
Like the fall of bomb on Hiroshima;
The human mass of Bangladesh
Like hapless cold pebbles of hell,
Lo, plead the world to save their souls
From the cruel nature's unabated gruel.


How hapless is man in face of the nature!
A mere human mass like any other creature!
What a struggle, somehow to survive!
What a fight to save near and dears!
What a courage in the face of odds!
To withstand a demoniac force!
Lo, mothers with babies in upraised hands,
Carried by floods to the death's holes;
Fathers huddled with kins on roof-tops
Collapsed with walls to watery graves;
Young loves braved oncoming giant waves
With passionate clasps
Around each other
To drown together in the gaping certain death.


Wind and water sped everywhere there
In death's ferocious hunger;
There, death rode on the wild tidal waves,
Destruction blew with fatal cyclones
And grappled Chittagong and Cox Bazar,
Big and tiddy country-sides,
In a quiet night of restful sleep
With untold knocks of the death's foul tools;
Nowhere could they go to save their lives,
No friends be of help, no elders could help;
Nowhere they could go to save their lives,
But, shut their eyes and pray the almighty.


Water there rained, like dirty hell,
Water rushed from all the sides,
Winds blew,
The watery world is in watery turmoil;
No soul is safe,
No glimmer of hope;
Virtual darkness in day itself
With demoniac clouds Yet hurrying in the sky;
The flares of hunger
In painful chill,
The fear of life In helplessness
Brought unseen hell down on the Earth.


The nature showed her invincible strength,
The nature revealed her suppressed anger
And proved to the world who is the master,
The ultimate winner in the historical struggle
Of the man to control the nature's powers;
No science rescued man
In the worst disaster
While lakhs died and crores, helpless,
While crores wept for the life's sake,
While they went mad with fear and disease,
With loss, grief and hunger's stabs
And doomed to nought in a few hours.


What a tragic disaster in human life!
A reminder that none in this world is safe;
All is right now, what next, who knows?
What brings what, when, why and how,
No stars predict, no scientists derive;
Disasters in mad flares of the discontented nature
Shoot in mysterious forms and vibrations
With panic on toes and deaths on heels
And havoc at the back like the Satan's shadows
That fall on the earth to squeeze life out.


Old sun is there,
Old moon and stars are there,
The unending sky is also there,
But, how changed the world overnight!
The babies who smiled a day back
Rot as corpse in deep waters!
Sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, Alive then,
Forlorn or dead now!
Busy streets,
Today, watery graves!
Living quarters,
Dreary watery holes!


No street-lining shops, No age-old giant trees,
No schools, mosques, markets, hospitals,
But, water, water, water all round;
Black clouds in the sky,
Deep water on the land,
Unending gust of cyclone all round;
God-forsaken man sits in the middle
And knows not whether he is dead or alive.