BE PROUD

Be proud, Meera, on your lover’s score;
your love sustained him dying,.
a bullet flinging him off the truck ambushed,
his hands thrown up towards the sky
clothed in a sunlit grandeur.
Praise be to God, he was spared
the remorse of killing his enemy leaving home
his wife and children waiting for his return.

Great are the soldiers on ether side
and unquenchable is their thirst for fight and blood:
they seem born to kill and die dreaming
of an unexplained glory  kissing their corpses
left rotten in the field by their brethren,
when the darkness falls.

Soft-talk your son into stopping weeping,
 telling him his father died a glorious death
 on his way to savouring the excellence of killing
 and of being killed,
and prepare him to live  mothered and grandmothered..

Sing your mother-in-law bereaved of his son
the glory of the war that kills thousands of  sons
of thousands of mothers,.
and be proud of being the wife of one of the thousands

 the war has glorified.
        …………………………………

Dr Bhaskar Roy Barman
India
 ..