Look, pal,
You are the resurrection day
of a nation and
I am the remembrance day
of the Father of the same nation.
In a way we are closely related too
being neighbours divided by just four days.
Yet, I am sad to say that there is truly nothing
common in between us.
I am a minute’s silent prayer.
You are a noisy carnival passing through a wide boulevard.
I am a joined palm with a bowed head.
You are a finger of cannon aiming the sky.
While I bend down and look for a sweeper’s broom
You straighten you back and tilt your head up
to enjoy the formation of a fleet of fighter planes.
Not only that, pal.
One cannot hide the fact that
These days the distance between us
has widened a bit.
The reasons may be many, but
Can’t but say this if onlyto remember.
It was the hero of compassion
in a story about a bird’s anguished cry
when felled by a hunter’s arrow
that he called out to as “he Ram!”
Not a God of war.
To see the same poetic justice of an epic that
began with the word ‘Please don’t’
in a life that ended with the same word
carries many meanings.
The three bullets that reddened my day
at 5:12 in the evening
definitely belonged to that hunter.
When your day is again decorated
with weapons,
when you stand with your chest
thrust out in pride greeting them,
it is good to remember all this.
Translation by Ra Sh
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