Pakistan, Why Oh Why

As I look at the land where I was born I search far and wide for years now gone When every waking moment was ripe with hope When to reach for the stars all you needed was a rope Where the days were a flurry of scenes so sweet Where the night was just that, a time to sleep And the dreams were filled with happy thoughts Coming true in haste and not always sought I remember the height of my life would be To just lie on the beach and then swim in the sea The sheer excitement in my face when my father showed The train tickets to the northern peaks all snowed Oh the soothing calm of a walk in the lane With no thoughts or qualms or worries or pain And the wind so kind on the body caressed Just a gentle reminder of a land so blessed And then one day in a blink of an eye What I thought was mine till the day that I die Was consumed by a fire raging hot and bright Like a blinding flash summoning a dark endless night And in that fleeting moment, my whole world changed Bringing grief and sadness and a nation so drained Deforming the way of life that we knew so well Quoting religion falsely to have their needs propelled And with such brutal force did the tides turn Not just villages and towns but whole cultures were burned Crushing love and tolerance all values in psalms Moulding a whole new way, a new version of Islam Preaching hatred against all, no one left to escape Forcing a veil on life, the real teachings were draped Fearing only the truth which could alter their fate Using might and terror against the challengers to their faith I look away, holding back the tears in my eyes Wondering how a land so rich and wise Could lose it all in such haste, such a small space in time Why the leaders let it happen, such a heinous crime And it dawns on me the reality of things That there is nothing more important than what education brings As a nation we have failed to pay our debt Having bred illiterate fools than a country more adept