More and more all was once
green and wooded,
shepherds drove plump cattle
through high pathways’ pastures,
wielding their age old crooks;
between blue clouds and sun,
sweet sweet mist approached
creations of eternal peace.
O! Those were the Days!
By different glows,
glowed everyone.

 

Clockwise:
Spring was Heaven’s Elysian Fields!
With patterns of colours:
bright, persistent curtains lay,
over hearts and hills,
near brooks and glades.
Those were heavens,
such heavens of Spring!
O! Those were the Days!
By different glows,
glowed everyone.

 

Each orchard was the Light
of frequent fruits,
Summer became a resort and more!
Such passion in the nectars
of grapes, pomegranates –
all profits ripened on their own!
O! Those were the Days!
By different glows,
glowed everyone.

 

Autumn’s poems went along to clad
sovereign hills in rusty gold,
every appointed leaf shimmered;
wonderingly a skyward raven
cleared his eyes,
and affirmed his bursts in voice of throaty bronze.

 

Time was…
hour by hour, day by day,
with a spin and a throw,
snowy dew’s serene whiteness criss-crossed
every speck on ground;
convents of God were snow peaks,
when winter’s charm gazed everywhere.

 

In past’s sacred time:
sons sat by the window sills
with their fathers,
and listened to folklore,
of brave forefathers gone, yet not gone;
for visible to the inner eye,
a look on death was upon smiling grass,
or in a happy tear,
none were prisoners in their graves.

 

Then All Began To Go Away.

 

O! Balk, though history never remained
a mother to you,
between sleep and waking
in spirit, your destiny, soared.
But, now…
Limb-missing children never sink
from sight;
opium-lords rise from the crowds,
to betray like Judas did!
Sealed edicts lash those who can sing,
or read for joy:
gathering experiences in darkness, women despair,
losing their rights to eccentric wars.
Neither sighing nor speaking,
people walk like ghosts in ghost-towns.
Alas! Alas!
Afghanistan!

Jan 2009

 

 

Geeta Chhabra