(AA) Canto 76: Terrorisms
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What trouble is beyond the rage of man?
What heavy burden will he not endure?
Jealousy, faction, quarreling, & battle,
The bloodiness of war, the grief of war
Sophocles
Friends & Enemies
There was a corpse outside
It was a fine and cruel noose
coming out the corpse’s mouth
Ramón Palomares
Meltem Muezzinoglu tests her husband,
“Those must be fireworks”, “for the cricket”
“I’m sure,” says Seyfi, stroking soft her hand,
But life’s ludicrous lottery ticket
Might win, might fail…
At gunpoint sardine press’d
Crams many tremble-pale Trident Oberoi guest.
They march them to a staircase top
Found guns towards them aiming,
“We are Turkish!” pleads Seyfi, “stop!”
“Get down…” forced down, as flaming
Muzzles ten poor guests do drop
Murderously maiming,
Just five were left, three women & the Turks
Buried in bodies spasming death jerks.
Reloading from an ammo belt,
Off led that battle team
In her back Meltem coldly felt
A rifle, says Hakim
‘Just to be, no more, this is all, this is the joy supreme.’
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
Small Matter of Timing
Alone at the bar, strangers everywhere,
the waiter is filling my glass with wine
glass after glass
Mohammed Bennis
As gunmen from the sanguine Leopold
Make contact with a fellow battleteam
For the next part of the raid to unfold
They must now strike at Mumbai’s social cream;
Security
All gunn’d down at the dawn
Such brash militancy the world has never known!
So, as I felt a movie star
Soaking up the superb views
Some Maharajah at the bar
Sparkling in his diamond shoes
My soul sensed Vishnu’s avatar
& there began to muse
On this moment’s explosive catalyst
A thousand thoughts too terrible to list!
I’d never felt alive before
Our streets now the front line
As more & more the art of war
Moves through this life of mine
First nervousness on undergrounds now gunsounds as we dine!
The Golden Dragon
November 26th
2008
Attacking the Taj
I pity all that evil are –
I pity & I mourn,
But the Supreme hath fashioned all
Robert Nicol
As gunmen from the sanguine Leopold
Make contact with a fellow battleteam,
For the next part of the raid to unfold
They’ll have to strike at Mumbai’s social cream;
Security
Gunn’d down quite merciless,
Jumpit militancy, girl slumps dead in a dress!
I felt a modern movie star
Soaking up the superb views,
Some Maharajah at the bar
In his sparkling diamond shoes,
Soul sensing Vishnu’s avatar
& there began to muse
Upon this night’s explosive catalyst,
A thousand thoughts too terrible to list!
I’d never felt alive before,
Our streets now the front line,
As more & more the Art of War,
Moves through this life of mine,
First nervousness on undergrounds now gunsounds as we dine!
The Golden Dragon
November 26th
2008
Death of a Bell-boy
Alas ! that death-like Sleep, or Night,
Should power have to close those Eyes ;
Which once vy’d with the fairest Light
Richard Leigh
Inside the Trident Oberoi hotel
The bell-boy stuck to that boring routine,
Of guest, & bag, & lift, & room, & bell
That strict path ground out since he was sixteen;
What was that sound,
Like cars cought in a crash?
He fearing spins around to see the front doors smash
& caught a bullet in the gut,
& dropp’d like Balfour pheasant,
Losing sensation in his foot,
His vision deliquescent,
He slowly let his eyelids shut,
His heart grew hesitant,
Then beat its last, & as his limbs relax,
His brain shuts down like wick-flame doused in wax.
As gunfire rattled floor-to-floor,
All the guests grew fearful,
Phoning the law, bolting the door
For something horrible
Was happening in their hotel, something incredible.
Trident Oberoi
November 26th
2008
The Death of Thalkur Woghela
No sooner had I got back home
Than they told me straight away
How my best friend had been killed
Konstantin Vanshenkin
On ample barenesses of poverty
Build gods our thrones, Thalkur calmly squats
By his young child, absorbing utterly
The fragrances upfloating from the pots;
A thudding knock
Opens the wooden doors,
A sudden sense of shock, a holy moments pause,
& then existence theater
Into intuition sprang,
Ishmail hisses, “give me water!”
Thakur felt the truthbomb bang,
Caught he’d been by a predator,
The sounds of gunshots rang,
Another unbeliever bidden dead,
His young son hidden underneath the bed.
“My brother,” blurted Kassab, “come
We have much work to do…”
So, chewing gum, they left the slum,
An uncheck’d wrecking crew,
Who like those two Columbine lads towards the next kill drew.
Mumbai
November 26th
2008
Wedding Crashers
All day; in troops they pursued the hostile people.
They hewed the fugitive grievously from behind
With swords sharp from the grinding
Egill Skallagrimsson
As when the seers of aulden times first saw
The face of God, these boys were mesmerized
By opulence bored deep in Vedic lore,
For many moments they stood hypnotis’d;
Voice breaks the trance
“Go, brothers, start the fires,”
Nearby, two men from France, the dregs of old empires,
Beg for their lives, but blown away,
As round them doors down booted
By chaos children, whose cruel play
By Loki’s Lashkar tutor’d,
Whom, like a Viking popinjay,
Moral laws refuted,
& brought down death, efficiently, on lives –
Fate knows, but time will tell, which skull survives.
A bolted door was tattershot,
Amit & Varsha scream’d,
They’d only got to tie the knot
That day, but then were cream’d
By slayers of the innocent, that dozen, double-team’d.
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
Random Murder
I will walk these streets
without fear of whatever unforeseen
may lunge at me when I’m lost in thought
Miguel Barnet
A taxi stopp’d for Laxmi Narayan,
A businessman now several minutes late,
With hindsight ‘twould be better if he’d ran.
& put escaping death down to good fate;
Seconds to slow
Kasab’s black bag was seen,
That with a bull’s bellow proceeds to smithereen!
Five taxis had quite random fann’d,
All thro’ the conurbation,
Each setting up a firebrand
To spread the devastation,
A Muslim Iman lost a hand
In a petrol station,
Proving how conflict in religion’s name
More ploy by power delegating blame.
She was a happy citizen
& now she has no legs,
Another sundown denizen
To join the gutter-dregs,
Like blind & tuneful eunuchs or the waddling leper-pegs.
Wadi Bunder
November 26th
2008
Wounded!
And will future generations
recite these stories by heart, hand
over chest?
Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
The call came in from deepest Pakistan,
“Brothers, you may commence your killing spree!”
But nothing in their multi-layer’d plan
Prepar’d them for such pangs of luxury;
Wild opulence
Blows peasant minds aback…
Gathering their senses they went on the attack.
Splitting their murder squad in two
One vaults the cantilever,
& every movement, in their view
Soon dying non-believer,
Into my own life-space they flew
Like the swine-flu fever,
Unwelcome & unwanted & unwell,
We sweated til a bullet broke the spell.
Shot ripping thro’ mine upper arm,
Dropp’d I, death-pretending,
No magi psalm, no pagan charm
Could prevent death’s pending…
So held my breath until I heard those murderers descending…
The Golden Dragon
November 26th
2008
Meeting Spirits
The night is full of mystery,
Whose understanding is
In trying no more to understand
William Montgomerie
As ugliest commotion moves elsewhere.
An aesthete at a wild tornado’s heart.
I saw a wise man sat upon a chair,
Seeking pleasant refugia, set apart;
His beard was long,
Hill rustic was his dress,
With flight of beads among white robes of simpleness,
Who said, “I am a student of
Peerless Shantiniketan,
Perusha’s all-pervading love
Denies all definition,
Sometimes the astral spheres above
Separate contrition
From human conscience, letting angers rise…”
I stood & star’d into these endless eyes.
As ignorance must drift away,
Knowledge stays immortal,
The gentle sway of gods at play
Simmering aortal,
Engag’d my my spirit, full of peace, thro’ Nabataean portal.
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 26th
2008
Mumble Words 