My Neighbourhood
The road to my backyard is long and straight
Evergreen trees abound and provide welcome shade
Home to myriad birds, butterflies and the bees
Last summer their branches were sawn off, without notice
The orgy with power-saws lasted barely a day
The trees shorn of foliage, the limbless torsos remained
To secure the safety of a VIP on a state visit
To a smog-laden metropolis, labouring hard to breathe
A few years back, we moved house to an oasis of green
But now, the storm of development is relentlessly closing in
Razing and levelling with electric saws and bull dozers
And a host of equipment used by modern day builders
Pile drivers mounted on rigs clump through the day
Unrelenting even at night, when the elusive foxes bay
Grieving in the darkness with plaintive howls
For a vanishing habitat where his endangered kin prowls
They have acquired fish farms and farmland
And even encroached on the protected wetlands
Which naturally dispose tons of city waste
In danger of destruction due to greed and haste
Truckloads of rubble are dumped every day
The pace is frenetic, even in sweltering May
Toiling hard for masters, who’ve deadlines to meet
And citizens to house, from whom votes they’ll seek
A haze of dust now covers construction sites
The pace doesn’t slacken here, even at nights
Construction materials arrive here daily by the truckloads
And given shape by workmen, as planned on drawing boards
What was once green cover and blue sky
Will be concrete monoliths, stretching up very high
With parking lots and asphalt streets
And billboards and neon signs, ready to be leased
No longer will fields of mustard flowers sway sinuously in spring
Nor ripe ears of golden corn bob gently in the wind
The sounds of frogs and crickets are a memory of the past
Songbirds have fled, deprived of their natural habitat
Slowly the memory of winter’s migratory birds will fade
Never again, the razed canopy of green, provide cooling shade
As I walk through my ravaged neighbourhood, I wonder why
Impotent rage pervades through me and I silently cry
Copyright © Sumit Majumdar | Year Posted 2012
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