The Bursting Pomegranate Poem by SANJIT MANDAL

The wrinkled face of the old lady
She stares at the debris
The broken walls
The stones turned to dust
The mosque demolished
Once the house of god
People are lost
They don't know who they are
Like the bursting pomegranate
The ripe red seeds fall free
On the dead land
No option of procreation
The pomegranates cannot grow
No grass of life could be found
The trees are drying up
Chemicals war goes on
Shrinking the human thoughts
Like the old lady wrinkling
Thinking
The past was of gold
Ancient architecture
Wonder of human civilization
Where art grew out of the busy lives
The streets were busy like water from a stream
They kept moving, falling, colliding, and rubbing
Their backs but they survived
No more they are to be found around
Dead souls may be moving around
Looking at the pandemonium
Worse than hell
The street dogs rotten flesh
Stinking skin of human ash
On the dead land without base
Keep circulating in the wind
Moving from place to places
Victimising the living dead
They have no souls
Walking dead bodies
Rotting in their living body
Fearing the piercing from the far sky
Sometimes sound of thunder
Bringing earthquake
The half dead houses fall again
The bricks cannot bear the pain
They fall like a rabbit flesh from the eagles' claws
And lost in the dead sand
Fly without wing to move
Unseen fire burnt them down
The debris is turned into ashes
Human body mixes with them
Leave no sign of recognition
Like a child born parentless
It hears only the bullets' sound
Stirs its young body
But the debris don't allow it
Tries to break out crying
Later feels better being covered
Sensing the agents of death flying overhead
They have only one purpose
The purpose to kill
Purpose to demolish humanity
Purpose to extinguish the dimming light
The fuel is already drying up
But the dictator's voice never dries up
Stand like an undying minaret
The servants kneel down
They carry the orders out
Killing their own brothers and sisters
Make no sense to them
Just like the blood red pomegranate seed
Falling on the dead ground
Nothing to grow on
Their hearts are dead
Mechanized they are
Remote controlled robots
Killing machines they are
They feel no hunger
Except that of human blood
But they don't drink blood
They smear their faces
Calling them warriors of the land
The land with no life
Not even a single bird could be seen around
Flying to witness the vanity
The humans causing themselves
Not a fox could be heard at dusk
Not a single half dead dog limping
They are all now rotten flesh
Unidentifiable for the humans
But who is there to identify
The wrinkled old lady
The dead bodies walking around
The burnt human ashes
The burning tyres
The broken fan of the helicopter
The hollow bullets from the guns
The pieces of the grenades
The old lady tries walking
But the dead hands catch her feet
She breaks away
Meets one car burning moving away
Some lights strikes it
Fire goes out
She falls on the dead bodies
Like the blood red seeds
But the blood dries in a second
Leaving the mark of nothing but ashes
The ruler cannot see the stinking ash
But smells power and money
Promises building new life
But life is already wrinkled
Like the face of the toothless old lady
She is down on the ground now
The last survivor
The just born child is still under the debris of Raqqa
The symbol of the pomegranate
Needs only a ground of water and oxygen
But the bomb gases have eaten them up
Now inside the belly of the empty guns
Waiting to be rescued
For a new beginning
A new life
A new civilization
But will we have it
Never or ever
Who guarantees
We wait, wait for the time to decide
Time cannot really decide
The masked humans can
Walking on the demolished ground
Death waits for them too
Who knows when
The pomegranate never knew
The hell fire would burn the leaves up
Bursting the ripe-dead seeds out
No bird around to satiate their hunger
No child to taste the fruit in its innocent lips
They have dried up
Just like the dead land
The grass has no greenery
The pomegranate has no more seeds
To disturb the face of the dead land
Oxygen has dried up in the empty belly
We are dying humans
Consciousness has already fled
Like the fleeting dead souls of the dogs
The birds
The cows
The vegetables
The tress
The wells
The ponds……………………………..
(The Man,18/11/17)

(Imagining a devastated place in Syria or Iraq taken by the militants; the army fighting the rebels and the civilians victimised; the children are trapped in the debris of the devastation. The imagined old lady representing the old rich civilization which is wrinkled, dried up, toothless, collapsed. Everything falls under the modern war affected zones. The birds are dead, dead are the animals just like the dead humans. What would grow in this dead waste land? Nothing but the buried dead souls will come out lurking in secret to flee from the hell fire. Once that was a world famous city; great pride was there in it. Famous for architecture and art and business, now lies demolished under the twenty first century inhuman world where only propaganda of political power works. Other things don't matter. Religious ideology has hollowed the human consciousness. No rational thoughts are to be found. We wait for the endless time being. We don't know when we will have any solution. Maybe this premonition of the apocalyptic world that the scriptures say is coming to take the human race into oblivion. )