Trains
The first train, a smoke puffing monster, ran in India,
Moving like a millipede, cautious, yet, no phobia;
As though well-chosen astronauts, lucky four guests traveled,
In cozy, cool, curtained compartments cautiously castled...
Soon, trains - thought of as luxury, prestige, status, and style -
Turned to be thrift trips that take travelers so long a mile,
A beggar could move in it singing, dancing, and begging;
Clowns, jugglers, and vendors easily could make their living...
The Indian trains and rails have long-lasting histories,
Mass accidents, like puzzles, have remained great mysteries;
Derailments, like earthquakes, shake and take the trivial tracks,
Direct collisions, like wild-bore hits, tricked by timely cracks...
Dangers, unintended, like calamities, die away,
Traumas of accidents, into normalcy, bloom someday;
Intentional human errors do corrode moral sense,
Like Abel, they knock the closed castles of human conscience...
A great train-trauma the times of nation never forgets,
Like horrible nightmares, innocent hearts got terrorized;
Is the partition-time human life slaughter, like cattle,
Sending them in blood pools by trains, like dead in the battle...
Then the religious bitterness in the form of riot,
Murdering, blazing - young, old, women and children - quiet;
Singing, dancing - like the god of death - around dead bodies,
Joyous, on the death of humanity, like dry poppies…
Common human beings here, like animals, do not care,
Many trains - as late as twelve hours, daily - all through the year;
Deaths and murders - like sunrise and set - if trains often bear,
Doesn't the goal of the invention of trains seem sheer sneer?
13 October 2021
Railroads, A Historical Glance Back Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: BJ Legros Kelley
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