A Patriot’s Vow

O my land,
when all is lost,
when you’re bones and shreds,
I will stay with you.

I will pick up your bones, weeping, battered, dejected, and collect you in my lap. I will swaddle you and sing to you. Like a wailing mother, like a prophet of love, I will bid to breathe new life into you.

Pouring my love out in those tears, wordless and exhausted, I will hold up your tattered clothes and call onto God: Look. Look into my heart as I surface what’s buried.

The lifeless body of a son, the trembling arms of a father. The frightened eyes of a child, the losing of innocence. The abrupt halt of a swing, the perennial silence after laughter. At a sidewalk, the searching hand of a brother, the absence of his sister. In an empty room, the haunting air, the questioning walls. The night terrors that came real, the dreams that retreated. The couplets of a poet, the coffins on my street.

I will point to the mother who sent her child out to play. She will speak for you. I will point to the daughter still waiting at the door. She will speak for you. I will point to the pious and the loved and the pure, they will speak for you.

I will point to the cradle stained with blood. It will scream for you.

I will guard what’s left of you with what’s left of me. I will soldier on, with you on my broken back. I will drape myself in green and white, and start the climb again.

And when all else fails, I will rally my fellow beings, and cross my heart, and chant the sacred chant.

Pakistan Zindabad. Pakistan Paindabad.
Pakistan Zindabad. Pakistan Paindabad.