Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
POEM :THE SILT OF SIN
BY DR JERNAIL SINGH ANAND
DR MOLLY JOSEPH remarks: What a pungent photographic portrayal contemporary Dystopia!
The Wasteland of our times!
Unparalleled in its flow of thought and powerful diction. This can be the right background necessitating the institution of International Academy Of Ethics.
Thanks Dr Molly Joseph
THE SILT OF SIN by Dr Jernail S Anand
“We have reached the pinnacle of civilization
We do not need darkness
Of night to perform black deeds.
We have great words.
And you know words are like pigeons.
Feed them, and then bleed them.”
THE POEM:
We are part of a great civilization
The capital cities of the world
Are Repositories of its greatness.
It is the cities where you can see
This civilization on the march.
Gods only made the country,
Man made these towns.
Where it is man who decides
Who is trodden under the wheels
And who the chariot of victory rides.
We go by great buildings created by man,
His engineering skills,
His designer prowess
And his power to startle and impress.
Gods have never seen
In Hell nor Heaven
Metros like Bombay, Delhi
London and New York
Buildings that kiss the skies
And the pangs of shelterless sighs.
Nor they had seen men dressed like angels
Speak like gods
And act like devils,
They had never seen language
Being mauled and molested
Waylaid and hijacked
So that now they have to issue special Instructions to contend with
A new genre of demon-o-angels.
The hybrid genre of transgenders
Gaining such popularity in divine circles.
I was talking of buildings.
Buildings are not civilization
Nor are bullet trains.
Nor the killer paraphernalia
On ‘merciful’ display in Ukraine.
The greatest miracles of man’s
Creative Imagination,
The leftovers of (in) human history
Which dot the earth
Are Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And the greatest men who created
This civilization and left their DNA
In its blood and bloody thought
Are great warriors, fighters, killers
Marauders, like Genghis Khan
Hitler and Mussolini
Alas!
There is no respite from them even today.
There is no dearth of rulers
Who want to step into their shoes.
Which ruler does not invoke Germany
And it’s great ruler?
What if he killed Jews
His concentration camps,
His wild fantasies, we excuse.
If you want a nation’s progress
We need to dead the mass
And to create a thinkless class.
Great rulers lick the dust
But their exalted stories are taught
In text books,
For generations to seek guidance,
And it’s pitfalls, avoid.
Alas! the records of history too
Are the great buildings
The great architectural wonders
Which have outlived
Their maniac creators.
But the real civilization is
How people live.
How they love and how they hate
Are they tolerated or exterminated?
How intolerant mafias rule nations
And play with human voice.
Where is this to be found?
These are not the stories to be told.
Call the literarians, they are accused of perjury.
We should not go much after
What happens in the physical world
For physical is
But a miniscule version
Of the great inflow of unseen psychic life
Which flows in the nerves of mankind
And nurtures dreams of vengeance
In its half-awake half-asleep state
Dacoits operate during the day
For they have no fear of any law
But criminals in civil uniform
Wait for the night
So that their dark deeds
Are carried out without falling
To the notice of the law.
We have reached the pinnacle of civilization
We do not need darkness
Of night to perform black deeds.
We have great words.
And you know words are like pigeons.
Feed them, and then bleed them.
I have heard a few dead words
Worn by some great men,
Around their neck like the albatross.
It is absolutely normal
If a few people sit in protests
While a grand event is taking place
Police is there to look after them
Like their parents
The white collar civilization was challenged
The other day by a blue event
A young girl was attacked and killed
In view of a public busy making videos
Go to the Ganges! O suffering souls!
And consign your tears
To the holy river.
Wash all your pain into her sensitive waters
Which carry the silt of human sin.
They carry the news of the evil
That men do, to the gods
Who hold the real sceptres and the real rods.
THE AUTHOR
DR JERNAIL SINGH ANAND has authored more than 150 books including 9 epics. He is a member of the Serbian Writers Association. He has been invited to attend the International Conference of Writers in Serbia in Oct 2023 as an official Guest.