(AA) Canto 79: Tainted Vedas
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It tugs at all of your sensibilities as a human being. It reminds everybody of the extraordinary complexity of choices in war & of what war does to people, to communities, to countries, to the world
John Kerry
Selectivities
Burning my house to keep
them out, you sowed wind. Hear it blow!
Soon you reap
John Beecher
Seyfi & Meltem felt no closer bond
Than ever had their lovers vows renew’d,
& of that comfort never felt more fond,
Holding each other as the others stew’d;
Those poor young girls,
With terror in their tears,
Whose captors’ flapping curls toward them, snarling, nears,
Then started to divide the five,
Stood, Seyfi, never surer,
“No, kill us here!” aloof, alive,
He pray’d the truthest surah…
“We no kill brothers,” as survive,
With no passion purer,
The Turks were separated, to a room
The others took, stepping inside their tomb
Into their bodies bullets pump pump’d
The Turks dared no glance back
As down they slumped, like baggage dump’d,
Adrenaline drew slack,
But left an epic galloping of springing cardiac.
Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Reactions
Well may the cavern depths of earth
Be shaken & her mountains nod;
Well may the sheeted dead come forth
JG Whittier
Far from a local policeman’s lethargy
Delhi’s commandos flown into the fray,
The bullish fervor of the NSG,
Design’d to keep Bin Laden’s dogs at bay;
Relief at last,
With the hardware grounded,
Before an hour has pass’d all flashpoints surrounded.
Mumbaikers bolted every door,
Their streets are mostly empty,
They’d never felt such fear before,
Tho’ fear they’d had & plenty,
Incredulity thro’ them tore
As down at CST
Bodies betow’d away by porter cars –
A city under siege & under stars!
Old tailor sat glued to his set,
Etch’d head held in wise hands,
Weary & wretched sensed the threat
From window-smashing bands,
A Muslim in the Hindu sphere, ‘Revenge!’ Mumbai demands.
Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Death of Fahadullah
You had a land in the age of darkness
unused to suicide or traffic
and its prayer-wheels turned like the sun
Mark Abley
As when, after our roseate sunset
With red rage bleeds, then fades as day brightens
Or when the last drags on a cigarette
Burns the throats cage, or when looseness tightens
Between two souls
Who thought they’d ever be
Like one, perfection falls to plight & perjury.
The phone rings out… “Yes?” “How are you?”
“Wounded…” “Brother Abdul?” “Slain…”
“Can you get out & throw a few
Grenades?” “I’ve none left…” “Your pain
In Paradise will pass…” outblew
The doors as muzzles train
Upon a shepherd’s son from Pakistan
Whose bullet stun, then slay… a tundra’s span
Of shock across the country drove
Groveless terraforma…
A spicy clove dropp’d in the stove,
“Want some chicken korma?”
“But mama, look!” “It’s just Mumbai” so dilutes the trauma.
Thiruvanamalai
October 27th
2008
Mumbai Musings
When this is all over I’ll make it up to you,
we’ll sit down and talk, as normal people do.
Evasiveness and half-truths will be a thing of the past
Gatoaitele Savea Sano Malifa
I stood upon the rooftop of the Taj,
All fire & brimstone in the floors below,
Strange place to find my soiree round the Raj,
A seat no other man would surely know;
Art lock’d in synch,
My subject & my song,
& I the living link, some lyrical King Kong.
As helicopters overhead
Went swoop-a-hoop like dragons,
I saw the discs & cable thread
Of pressmen in their wagons,
Wonder’d how many then were dead,
Lives fell’d by terror-guns,
In stiffen’d heaps of twisted sleeping piled,
It seem’d as if Laxsmi on me had smiled.
I watch the sunrise in the East,
Thank Surya for it,
Alive at least, the day’s deceas’d
Speaking to my poet,
“Remember us forever, sir, let your verses show it”
The Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Sandra Samuel
I hang on the edge
of this universe
singing off-key
Nikki Giovanni
When morning broke the Rabbi clung to life,
His hope the hand that clings to clifftop ledge,
“As hostages,” he soothes his antsy wife,
“Why would they ever cast us ‘cross the edge!”
Just one phone call
Demolishes their dreams,
Shot parents stain wall while little Moska screams.
His nanny left the hiding place
As the gunfire moved elsewhere,
& charging up the back staircase
Took the baby in her care,
Stared awhile at daddy’s face
That blankly back did stare
Then rush’d outside quite antilochus-fast –
Thro’ courage & quick-thinking dangers pass’d.
The operation’s master-throne
Watches events unfold,
Then telephones, the gunmen groan,
At slackness he did scald,
To hear, “You’re very close to Heaven, brothers please be bold.”
Nariman House
November 27th
2008
Negotiations
Oh Jerusalem, the city of sorrow
A big tear wandering in the eye
Who will halt the aggression
Nizar Qabbani
As Pakistani master on the phone
Of Qassab’s capture news communicates,
& overhead, wings spread, spymaster drone
Collected data, chewing on their dates,
Two terrorists
Counting Qassab’s costage
Unbind the rope-tied wrists of a dog-tired hostage.
“Tell India’s Prime Minister
If our brother not releas’d
To us then, something sinister
Sentenc’d is, as tension increas’d
Waved was explosive canister
In Norma’s face , threats ceas’d,
“If you do this, for him, for us, for me
You’ll sabbath celebrate with family.”
As she those wild demands relay’d,
The truth she truly knew
Her trust afraid, only delay’d
.Was death that closer drew –
She said goodbye, hung up the phone, “They’ll see what they can do.”
Nariman House
November 27th
2008
Wedding Reception
The echo rings of a strange mystery,
The human cry, the sobs of misery
Of a wild desperate love — defeated — spent
Ada Negri
With Mumbai’s grandest icon all aflame
& government resolve set to sternest,
The chief of police at last defends his name,
“Begin evacuation in earnest!
The enemy
Trapp’d on an upper floor!
Beneath them solemnly, lie casualties of war!”
Our weddings are inspiring
A day to never forget,
Guests were huddl’d from the firing
Like young tuna near a net,
From their miseries retiring,
They’d play’d Russian roulette –
Breathless, blinkless, scatter’d in shatter’d rooms –
Nerves shredded, heartbeats leaping at the booms.
The groom was safely led outside,
Eyes blinking in the light,
O how they cried, his sweet, young bride
Stood there in sari white,
Thou’ stain’d with others’ bloodshed, it had been a dreadful night.
Taj Mahal Hotel
November 27th
2008
Mopping Up
Never will I stop crying
yesterday’s memories will
always linger
Mutabaruka
As Berlin drank the dregs of Hitler’s war
With Allies all-denuding on all sides
The denouement of sixty hours of gore
Closes on two lads with no hope to hide;
Their final stand
Beneath blades heliborne
Sought out by death’s dread hand their manly vigor worn.
A rocket flew into their room
Half-a-second ‘fore demise,
That with a flash & crash & BOOM
Blew the brains out of their eyes,
‘Twas an instantaneous doom
& as the battle dies
The city streets all beeps & cheering pup
As if Tendulkar had won the World Cup.
They brought ten bodies from the shell,
Prayed for the lost rabbi,
For when war-hell on humans fell,
A few Jews too must die,
Like… when to Auschwitz Berlin once diverted gas supply.
Nariman House
November 27th
2008
Goodbye To All That
Thou should’st tell me all its story,
Whence, and where, it cometh here,
That my heart may yet be wary
Herr Ulrich von Liechtenstein
A festival of recriminations
Post-prandial, erupted thro’ Mumbai,
The wreckage of the battlefield stations
Itself in every single middle eye;
When dirty dusts
Taterdamalian
The common psyche crusts with scriking alien.
For that’s how terror operates
& all such propaganda
Some turns the murderers to greats
Like quenchless Alexander,
Some poisons us, some separates
Families – demand the
Truth, I say, not creochsiping bullshit,
Like Ukraine pseudo-wars & Covid spit.
The sentence of the people squats
& squirts its dirty shits
In copper pots… meanwhile robots
Assemble broken bits,
& recreate realities that terrorism splits!
India
November 27th
2008
Mumble Words 