Tears of Blood

R.K. Brojen Singh *

Mother, I remember the words
You said few decades ago
With unlock fear and despair;
Wake up my dear,
It's getting too late
If you don't wake up now,
It will be too late.'
Then few drops of tears fallen
From her eyes, flooded by emotion
Through it I saw
The faces of the friends
Deformed and vanished,
The changed color of mountains and histories,
The meadows whose silence has been destroyed
By the voices of death,
The blows of the wind
Mixed up with the rhythms of broken hearts and morns,
The flooded Imphal river
With the blood of untimely deaths and tears,
The doves of burned wings
Beneath the smoked sky,
The fields full of skeletons of the brothers and sisters.
Then, Look at the whirlpool, twisting
With the evolution of space and time
Then it vanished,
We ask questions why
That makes it to become a riddle.
The history remembers unheard
Have been told about past and present, then future;
Long dreaming makes me nightmare
That nightmare brings me
At the border of life and death
That let me think about the beautiful stars
That had fallen and vanished,
About the questions
Whose answers got complicated,
About the souls of the deaths
Waiting for justice,
Then asking me, 'Am I death or alive?
Has the arrow of time been broken?
What makes difference between death and alive?'
Then I heard Mother say,
'Wake up my dear,
It's getting too late
If you don't wake up now,
It will be too late.'
Upon the death bodies, full of unhidden marks
Blood of the friends is visible
Even at the darkness of the night,
Opening our eyes in the morning
We washed our faces by our own blood,
From the rivers or ponds in the courtyards
Or in the fields.
The morning shows the sun is imaginary
The red rays of light burns the innocent hearts
Says darkness of night swallowed and killed the hopes,
The shed blood washed the face of the sun.
Is it the day or night we thought?
Am I sleeping or waking up?
Decades are passing by
With despairs, pains, sorrows, injustice,
Since sunrise to sunset unsatisfied
Within the complexities of unsolved problems
Willingly or unwillingly by pseudo 'I's of 'I'.
Then why should we live dying?
Why should we damn cry unheard?
Why should we ask questions unanswered?
Why? Dear friend, so I don't cry today
Tears could not wash away everything in heart,
When the death bodies speak, could not remain silent
Better die or live
Not in between or mixture
It has been long enough suffering the pain.
Still it is morning now
Still the sun is rising with tenderness
Still closing the eyes ending to dream
Still to hold the flag of various colors,
And Mother came and pets my body
And say with bold but in fear and anxiety
'Wake up my dear,
It's getting too late
If you don't wake up now,
It will be too late.'