Third World Country Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

At the height of alienation
When I see the world crumbling in front of me
When the school going children still wiping off tears
From the morning sleeplessness and waiting helpless
The school bus with broken windows and failing engine
The class room full of dust for it has not been cleaned
The teacher out of lethargy and the night’s woes
When he has been unable to sleep for power failure
And his salary is too low to support his family
And he has lost all wits and remembers no jokes
To start his lesson with or check the home work

The music has gone slow and dull without melody
The drums neither are joyous or sad or militaristic
The artists are now singing to earn a piece of bread for themselves
The joys of living now slowly converting into miseries
The housewife in search of cheap grocery searching place to place
Carrying a bunch of potatoes or pulses for her kitchen at night
The stove of her kitchen she is not sure will lit
Baking food she adds tears instead of water
To feed to her children sweet

The man going to the office to face an ill tempered boss
Who himself had been struggling to keep up with his white collar
His fat belly now shrinking for he is also feeling the heat of the things
Throws papers and files from his table in search of some sanity
And to write a few words about a report to be sent by the closing time
The employee tired of listening to the new jargon of the management
Wants a change in real terms as for a long time he had been waiting
To hear something coming from the foreign consultant hired
With exorbitant perks and when he knows that the World Bank is playing havoc

A body of economists meet to set the things right and bring down the prices
When the sarcastic anchor on the television channel who had been paid for
The programme,
Where some politician with ugly face and having looted the country’s poor
Brags about his achievements and the economist explaining something irrelevant
And when thousands of youth carrying diplomas and degrees wait in queue
For an appointment while judges are marching long in the streets
And when that pretty girl waiting for her marriage one day and looking for a dream boy
The dream boy is now running from pillar to post for some shelter
And when some fraud has taken place and has pigged the pension of the old couple
Street crime and a proxy war imposed on the poor of the country
The president has an address and the prime minister meeting foreign ambassadors

Nearby
There is a military band singing national anthem