Rule of the Sirens
(for Students of JNU)
like sirens
wailing through
night streets
they steal
the quiet
haven inside
your mind.
not to alert
you about the
nation lying
wounded in the
ambulance of
our youth’s
desperate protest
but to scatter
seeds of canard
so a forest fire
burns the truth
beneath the
lies.
they invade
the halls of justice
and crush
the voice of reason
but truth being
stranger than fiction,
truth will rise
like smoke
like the Phoenix
from the burning
embers of a nation
that will not
be held hostage
by a parliament
of rhetoric
and rogue politicking.
do they not know
‘it is rain that
grows flowers.
not thunder’?
it is enlightened youth who
nurture nations
not those who sunder.
❈ ❈
It Happens
it happens again and again and again and no algorithm has taught people of this planet to learn from the hate of bigots to learn from the blood of violence to learn from the ashes of death to learn from the pages of history to learn from the wounds of humanity to learn from the tears of the dispossessed, to learn from the lucent eyes of an infant.
❈ ❈
It Was Then
it was then
that they blossomed
voices needing
the water
of resistance
sprang out
from the soil of silence.
it was then
that they bloomed
when the bullets
of power
bruised their
sanity,
their temporal lives.
Shaheen Bagh
and Mumbai Bagh
sister fields – fertile
with bloodied wounds
nudged the voices
to rise –
to rise beyond fragility
to crush the conspiracy
of violence
to erase the walls
of draconian divides
to condemn
assumptions of impunity
to rise with the voice
of parity and peace.
it was then
that they blossomed –
when the fires of hate
had burnt them.
(Bina Sarkar Ellias is a poet, and the founder, editor, designer and publisher of International Gallerie, an award-winning publication since 1997. Besides, she is a fiction writer and art curator. Her books of poems include The Room, Fuse, When Seeing Is Believing, Cercana Lejania / Closer Farness and Song of a Rebel.)
