Hark!Listen!
No ear has ever heard what l heard
The cry of a baby,
But this one was quite unusual;
lt seemed to be echoing an unusual message.
What famine is this
That caused even a day-old baby
To cry out:"l am hungry!"

Then landed another cry in the ears of my heart
lnterluding with the child's cry in a saddening chorus.
A weeping woman-the baby's mother.
With torrents of tears
Teetering down her cheeks
She sought fellow women for comfort
But to her own astonishment
They were each wailing much louder than she was.
Their voices culminated to their sticking place
And polluted the atmosphere
With an acrid smell of grief.
ln one swoop of the devil
The once-upon-wives
Had been turned into chanting widows,
Their husbands-victims of the curse of war.
Amid the turmoil of mourning,
The preacher could hardly hear his morning sermon:
"Blessed are the mourners for they shall be comforted."

Hark!Listen!
No ear has ever heard what l heard
Nor retina seen what l saw:
The eerie whistle
Of another descending zeppelin!
Like the nocturnal owl
Gliding lowly and slowly
Towards its complacent rodent prey,
ln the light of darkness,
Talons resharpened and ready to sink
lnto the depths of life,
So was the bomb
As it flapped its wings in flight
Toward uncertain target
Which would otherwise be me or even you,
just but two numbers
Amoung the inumerable armourless,
Powerless
And hopeless civilians.

With my shadow as my only cover
I enfolded my hands over my ears,
ln vain ofcause,
And sought refuge
ln the darkness of closed eyes.
l could perceive
That my facial expression
Just like everyone else
Defined fear very accurately
l could discern everyone wished
They had died when they had the chance
To die in a better way
But a mere wish it was
And so our eyes were obliged
To see what they did not want to see
And our ears to wait expectantly
For a sound they were very unwelcoming.

Boooooooommm!!!
So fatal was the deafening explosion
But the silence that followed was more deafening
Than the explosion itself,
That for a while and a half
One would gladly think
Their long overdue wish,
To be translated from the land of the living,
Had finally been granted.
Everyone lied prostrate on the crumbled tarmac
For a while longer,
But our mental illusion was interrupted
By a far-off faint cry of a horrified baby.
Slowly but surely
l opened my eyelids,
One eyelid at a time,
And was greeted by the ghastly sight
Of wounded and dead bodies
Scattered helplessely
All over the distorted terrain.
l was definately not dead,
Not dead yet so to say,
Because the worst was yet to ensue...