Lo, This Is Earthly Life! Poem by Dr John Celes

A medico girl, young she was;
A brilliant Madurai lass;
While coming to her afternoon class,
She DIED by the road-side, alas!

A van had hit her directly;
She met her death most instantly;
With clavicle and fractured skull,
She was injured occipital;
And in the shatt’ring glass’ sounds,
She bled like hell and died at once!

She’as rushed to our hospital, altho’
She passed away in minutes, oh!
In a pool of blood, her head just lay;
To save her life, there was no way.

Doctors and students, rushed to see
Her corpse but stood just silently;
Fate had been so cruel to snatch
A life in teens from her dear batch!

Oh, what a shock, her batch-mates had!
The tragedy was indeed sad;
It was an accident! Alright,
At noon-time and in bright sunlight:
But had she escaped, she’d have been
A doctor with an extra sheen.

Yet, God didn’t give her one more chance
Or save her from Death’s noon-time dance!
A victim of a fatal game,
V. Dhanalakshmi was her name.

The silence was soon broken by
The laments of students near-by;
‘Dhana, we love you! ’- They all cried;
But in a trice, the girl had died.

‘Dana, don’t leave us! ’ they all wept;
But in the Lord, she happily slept.
They cried and cried till mid-night came;
They screamed all stunned- who was to blame?

Her class-mates sat round her weeping,
Until her parents came, leaping;
Too shocked for words, they looked like ghosts!
And cried aloud: all stood like posts.

All night, all wept, again, again;
All hearts were anguished and in pain;
‘Dhana’- she lay under a shroud;
I heard their cries all clear and loud.

And in the night, I heard one noise;
The birds all spoke in one strange voice-
‘DHANA, we love you, we love you.’
‘DHANA, we miss you, we’ll miss you.

And this is what the earth can give;
With life for life’s cause, let’s all live.