The Earth Poem by Sayeed Abubakar

Darkness devours here catching lights,
The way a lizard devours mosquitoes
Catching one after one with its tongue.
Here terrorism swallows captured lives,
The way demons in folk-tales
Crunch a man's bones.
Here distrust eats up catching hearts,
Like a jackal eats up every bit
Of an ill-burnt corpse on a pyre.

By tearing all the graves of Mohenjo-daro
And Mesopotamia,
By kindling lamps of atomic bombs,
Here the herds of wolves start dancing
At the pompous Festival of Feast;
They belch with satisfaction,
Begin to brush their teeth, absorbed in fun.

Here the dead men injured from bombs
Cry out, 'Help! Help! '
Here the living men, eyes smeared with death
And nightmare, enter like Pharaoh's mummy.
Here the fine arts binding talismans on their necks
Recite again and again the name of Satan.
Here poems, like slaughtered wild pigeons,
Flutter their wings on blood.

Yet the Sun, as usual, illuminates all regions every day;
Yet the Moon, as usual, deludes all sides with her beauty.

Translation: 15 June,2017