The shores were singing joyfully
now they wouldn’t envy the lands,
for they could sea ships of humans arriving to inhabit on their sand.
But the singing hushed and shores looked perplexed as the sounds they were hearing from months today roar,
for the tattered baggy clothes hanging on bones peeping out of flesh
screamed at crescendo the story of gore.
The shores were talking in surprise as those sallow sagging faces gleamed as gold
on seeing those plastic tents and stinking makeshift toilets,
they were struck in silence on knowing the secret the wind reeking of blood told.
The shores learned to read
‘refugees’ was inscribed in invisble ink on their head
these inhabitants were not humans
by now all their ecstasy was dead.
Yet the shores puffed with pride
on rewarding these minions for not losing hope
or rather their lives
but all that was theirs in unprecedented gore,
in apoplectic waters which coudn’t capsize their battered boats,
what more could they ask for.
Shores were humming on knowing their superiority
for their lands were drenched with blood,
all the colour and light of lands was trapped in the houses razed to rubble,
all the music of joy was choked in gunshots and thud.
But the shores could not sing, they were raging with fury
the cries of children for food
squealing men being bludgeoned
women’s silence of sigh
became the song of survival on their territory.
The shores yearned to resume their singing and planned to wash them away in the dark of night
when they saw in fainting starlight a hollowing imprint of a child next to where he died
they never sang, shores were never again bright.
-JASLEEN KAUR
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