Goodbye! Poem by Ajit Das

‘Wake up, baby, wake up'.
cradling his infant twins
sobbing Al-youssef uttered,
choking back his tears.

Toxic gas: the silent killer,
had snuffed out their life.
The grieving father realized
bodies in his arms were dead.

At their final resting place,
in a heart-wrenching voice
he mumbled: ‘Say goodbye,
baby, say goodbye'.

Goodbye? Was it to a father
they hardly came to know
or to a world they got no chance
to live in, before they were killed?