Looking back
An Elegy to the Fourth Turning
I struggle, my lunch lingers on my beard
My daughter, the warrior, wipes it away
She admonishes me, my loss of firmness
My shivering hands, reach out and touch
That beautiful, that hardened busy face
Scarred from her battles, she hides it
The memory, the ones that were loved
The horrific choices made, her reality
Of death of meaning, and of purpose
The coldness of slaughter by machines
Her children frolic in the peace of days
Hardly wrung out from The Dread War
We were so incredibly naive back then,
Like children playing in a mined garden
“Stay away from those thorny bushes!”
We who adults, captains of that world
Careened into our cynical inevitability
Bearing the sins of the last awakening
Stood vigil in mute silence, as the world
Frothed itself into a frenzy of decadence
Our heroes long forgotten, as we birthed
Our children, not knowing that we were
The parents of the next heroes — little girls
And boys born to a cacophony of divisions
All the structures of reality, burning down
Called to action, when they should dream
Dreams ripped viciously from their minds
And trampled on the killing fields of justice
How you suffered my child? What did we do?
We burnt this world with children as kindle
See now this peace — this new world that
You, my child, are building for tomorrow
Our children are the redemption we couldn’t
Our souls are doomed to eternal unraveling
Our grandchildren will inherit the silence
© Unni Nambiar (Sep 3rd, 2023)
