The Young Bravehearts Poem by Jayshree Misra Tripathi

We travelled out of Keren
on the road towards the hills
where many brave soldiers lie,
some as young as sixteen.
We entered the cemetery
only to behold scenic peace,
neem trees swaying gently
in the mid-morning sun,
at odds with the blood spilled
near these very grounds.

The guide asked us to sign
a Visitors Book, then led us
to where our countrymen
had been cremated together,
three hundred, he said, names
are forever etched in stone.
They fell in 1941, the Second World War;
British Indian troops and some French,
against Mussolini's Italian army,
in the colony of Italy's East Africa.


He stood quiet and grave,
my husband, lost in deep
thought, I could not intrude;
touched each name in reverence
as high above us, as he could.
He closed his eyes. I was filled
with grief for these young soldiers
so far from home, here in the foothills
now serene, death on cruel battlefields,
for others' political causes for Power.


We walked by the gravestones
of other young soldiers and prayed
for their brave souls, finally at peace, resting
in a beautiful War Graves Cemetery,
thousands of miles away from their homes.
The sun had set, we left with heavy hearts
proud of our soldiers, our heroes,
never to be forgotten;
to journey back to where we temporarily resided,
also far, far away from our Homeland.
****
Published 'In Songs of Peregrinators: An Anthology of Poems on Travels' March 2022
Edited by Amarendra Khatua & Mandira Ghosh