Shayon Mukherjee


3C (Year 9)

 

Crossing the Line

 

We stand beneath the solemn sky,

the clear blue sky

that beautiful sky,

flea-ridden, trench-hidden,

shaking.

Fear

like a mephitic fog,

seeping into our hearts

and hurling itself against

our woefully inadequate wall of bravery.

We stand beneath this oh-so-mocking sky

and wait.

 

We wait the day away

and the sky takes on the colour

of the ubiquitous battery smoke.

Then,

we are rushed away

to the front line,

again,

and we watch the other platoons stumble back,

fearful,

shell-shocked,

half-sized,

again.

And only then the order comes;

"Charge for your country,

for your freedom, or death!"

And we shudder and shake,

and quiver and quake,

a pause, a beat,

then charge.

 

Flashbacks,

a wife at home,

children,

my very own family,

how sorrowful it is

to leave my heart with them

and venture forth into

this god-forsaken territory,

two years now, or three?

A warm blanket of emotion smothers me

before I cast it out

and coldly acknowledge that

the only thing planned ahead for me

is victory

or defeat.

For me, or for them.

 

Flurries of bullets rent the air,

Screams,

Shouts,

Thunder,

as fears take essence

on the grey soils of France,

stained with the memories

of Britons and Germans alike.

Horror enough

to raise the question of sanity,

Our leader's sanity,

Their leader's sanity,

God's sanity,

Lucifer's insanity.

Naught but Hecate

could weave a world of sorrow

so frightening, so unjust,

with such precarious morality;

so ghastly

that one man's actions

have power enough

to condemn us all.

 

Streaked with blood and worse,

stumbling

over barely human forms

both alive and dead.

Wandering blindly through this

sea of sorrow,

this deep of despair,

this peak of injustice and fear.

I stop,

crouch,

a hiatus in the fighting,

then a bang.

I turn,

a man,

not ours,

obviously past life’s true inevitability.

I raise my gun.

I pull.

His misery ends.

 

How?

How can Hell exist

when our world is there already?

Happiness is just a nine letter word,

lonely in the midst of the negatives.

Man need not

this insatiable lust for war,

and realisation strikes

as I realise escape is near.

I stare at the rifle in my hands

mournfully.

 

I sigh with the earth

at the cruelty of man

and Nature's lost battle.

Whether the battle is lost or won,

we have lost the war.

Escape,

family,

fear,

sanity ambiguous.

Who cares?

Not I

And not Him either.

We all die eventually,

Man's fundamental flaw,

I raise my weapon to my trembling temples,

I understand now.

I pull.

Blackout.

 

 

 

 

A Haiku Haiku

 

Haikus are quite short,

They can be about all things,
Example given.