Despair

A simple, yet woeful poem about two brothers. Hope, you like it!

‘T was a gloomy, grey and cloudy Sunday;

The sun veiled by the curtain,

Had gone way overhead; yet in sight was bleak.

The white silk kurta fluttering in the cool wind of the afternoon,

Felt cosy and warm, yet sleek.

The ice was melting, the snow was wet;

The narrow alleys thronged with joy,

The din of life was on a high;

Every soul was worth one of my priceless toys.

I looked at him and he smiled back; warm with pride.

I was his little brother, shouldn’t he be?

He held my hand and pulled me forth,

And like the lazy clouds up above, I followed;

The unrestrained affection and the unfathomable fear that love expounds,

Together in cause swept through my heart;

I prayed his name be hallowed.

The multitudes rejoicing in the festivity of the moment,

Felt as if were images of my own.

For once in my short life every breath was ecstasy;

It seemed the fruits of happiness,

From the seeds of hope had finally grown.

Alas, I flew, like a dead and dry leaf following the wind’s will.

As the colourful canvas of mortal happiness I had before my eyes,

Was splashed by an explosion of hatred and rage;

Where Eden, a moment ago, was burgeoning in its prime,

All that was left, in my book of life, was a blood splattered page.

In the grave anguish that suddenly flushed my soul,

I struggled to get to my shaking feet.

Cries of anguish, howls of pain and the plague of death carved in all horizons,

In the blur that was engulfing my eyes;

All I sensed was the innocent dead reek.

My innocent heart missed a beat as I squinted on the wet, maroon earth,

His face was numb, his pulse frozen; spasms sabotaged my former mirth.

I cried, as a six year old should; clutching his identical white kurta,

Except it was bespattered with red rouge,

Of any sign of evanescing life inside it- alas, there was a dearth!

That day a part of me died;

A day that left in my soul an ineradicable smear;

Helpless and meek I sat there by my brother’s corpse.

In the babel of chaotic, woeful and helpless voices all around,

What echoed was the shrill tone of human despair.