A Cold Moonless Night

On the heap of his ruined house he sits,
And thinks of his past, with photograph in bits

In the stagnant silence of night,
 He hears the voices, the laughter bright. 

The years he spent in that place, 
With his family in time of solace.

 Those flashes of innocent joys, 
Move past his moistened eyes, 

The warm hugs of dad and mum,
His little sister's smile and the love of his chum

But all is dust and rubble
The family is no more, 
His little boat capsized no prospect off the shore

Left homeless, like millions in this turmoil, 
Knows nothing of "terrorism", "petroleum" or "oil".

 His family too succumbed to persecution 
At the hands of a mighty nation 

horrifying actualization of Man's brutality
 Destroying all: life, love, utility, 

Frozen in shock and fear, the child looks up,
 With pleading eyes, to the heavens above.
 "Why this suffering? Why this pain? 
Why no shower of mercy rain? 

Our native land, is it no more ours?
 He went on asking, the silent stars

He remembered then, his bed- time story 
Of the friendship of the three little birds.

 "Nature is kind" he thought, 
"But man isn't", he reflected

And in that moment he grew up years
 "He will live, and not be like men"
 Consciousness, a lifelong gem
 
This moment alighted another star 
A beacon of hope in his little heart
 
At all destruction, he cast a final look,
 As a mighty turn his life took.
​
He started taking his steps back, 
To chalk for himself a different track.

​_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Tooba Khaliq,
​Clinical Psychology