Hatred And Hostility Must Stop. Poem by Bernedita Rosinha Pinto

Barbaric days like ancient stories re-appear
as one war ends, another begins,
as one country is liberated, another invaded,
as one bomb explodes, another few die
sometimes in a Mosque or a Church
where they have gathered to kneel and pray;
sometimes in the streets or in marketplaces
where innocents walk without suspecting
that just in a few seconds, they will perish.
And as those soldiers keep fighting, losing lives
in the action of duty to their country
their mothers lose grown-up sons
when they least expected the sons they bore
and reared to die so young
by holding guns in hands and shooting others
lest they got shot in the chest or back at war.
And though literacy and schools have gone
hand in glove over the years,
centuries have passed yet unpredictable have been
these wars, these attacks of terror
though over-educated are citizens and their leaders
though well-programmed is every nation's strategy
supported by sophisticated weapons of defence.
Yet amidst the clutter of popularity of politicians
the mind and attitude of one single leader provokes civil war,
which gets embedded by terrorism raked by terrorists
who wait to prey upon such incidents for endless benefits
while ignorant citizens succumb to abandoning their homes
and moving in search of safety to their lives and future.
And as families with children are compelled to flee
they turn into homeless refugees
when in their own country they lacked nothing
when in their own homes they lived in serenity,
instability and uncertainty gets encouraged
as other nations initially watch silently those
protests turning violent, slogans turning louder,
tear-gas shells getting thrown to disperse
those crowds that shout and cry abhorrence
to those rules and their rulers who have fleeced
their economy, their stability without justice
thus igniting unjust wars which turn into
destruction, deaths, loss of peace and shelter
as houses get bombed and families get dis-placed
while many die in the action of trying to defend
their country from those invaders.
Yet men who have read and learnt about
wars and its catastrophe, its cause and its effects
never cease those wars, thus killing each other
knowing that even one life which is lost
has its own value in his own home
as so valuable is that son to his own mother
as so valuable is that husband to his own wife
as so valuable is that father to his own child.
O' how much it pains to be literate and watch
those conflicts of horror, hostility and hatred,
when the schools of education are scattered
everywhere, in every street and every city to enlighten
how un-gainful is terror and bloodshed over peace and harmony
and though many lessons of history have told the same story.