Silent Moans

By Muzaffar Ahmad Nengroo

Money has corrupted you, Oh! Master Creation,

The Compassion is robbed by the material greed.

What was Mercy! Is mugged and does recede,

Day by Day by your opportunist negation.

I serve you tireless in the bloom and in the fall;

Yet I am baffled by your treacherous traits,

My bones crumble, my muscles weaken

By lumpy loads of manure,

Fodder bulges and apple lots alike.

My strength vanishes in your servitude,

And I am waned by your treacherous attitude.

I am a being, I do have a life,

I am slaughtered with your diabolic knife

Of rapacity, arrogance and material hunger!

In the cruel Arctic splashes of winter,

I am left homeless without any shelter.

No food or fodder comes my way

Only those hungry canines waiting for their prey.

That can tatter me into bits without slight mercy.

But you are cruel and brutal, million times more,

They follow Nature and you, your craving appetites

My bristles do shiver in the frosty winds,

My tough skin gives in before the chilly might.

In the Seasons, I am fettered and chained,

Resuscitate in my realms that brutal begaar.

In the chilling gusts of winter,

I am flung away like the tattered clothes.

I become orphan but without a tag;

There is no orphanage to take me in.

As I become useless and burden

To the greedy and haughty mind.

Like those orphans of war-torn states,

With no hope, future or emancipation.

If only I have human vocals,

My wailing moans will gloom the April bloom.

The sane hearts will burst and crumble

On perceiving my misery and mumble.

The sky is shedding tears on seeing my plight,

The winter moans and is wailing on my site.

As I narrate my agony and suffering

Before the Creator’s Justice and Might!

The reply comes and reverberates in the vales,

Certainly, there are beasts in human clothing!

Note: In some rural areas of Kashmir, people rear donkeys for the various workloads during the spring and the summer seasons respectively but during winters some of them let these poor creatures lose to feed on their own just to save some petty gains. This cunning attitude has prompted me to write a poem on behalf of these poor animals. Early in the morning I saw a mother donkey and her baby shivering in the chilly gusts of wind, their bristles were upright due to the cold and I write what I felt they might say if they could…

By Muzaffar Ahmad Nengroo