Pockmarked walls,
residues of revenge
that massacred hope,
wailing in echoes of grief.
Rooms-full of innocence
slaughtered, burned, buried
in a rubble of books, pens
and examination paper.
Corridors explode in eerie silences,
pools of blood map desolate floors
and litanies of heartbreak ricochet
from the courtyard, where
the hundred once laughed;
their dreams still alive
under brimming backpacks
and ochred clothing.
Somewhere, a lone shoe
seeks a lost foot.
An inhuman act etches
itself on the frenzied face
of the weeping mother
and the reeling nation.
Somewhere, a reporter
cries at a candle-lit vigil
and I lament in lines
of unreconciled verse,
as the sky lies wounded
on the school steps.
© Usha Kishroe, 17th December 2014.
Indian born Usha Kishore is a British poet, writer and translator, resident on the Isle of Man, where she teaches English at Queen Elizabeth II High School. Usha is internationally published and anthologised by Macmillan, Hodder Wayland, Oxford University Press (all UK) and Harper Collins India. Her poetry has won prizes in UK Poetry competitions, has been part of international projects and features in the British Primary and Indian Middle School syllabus. The winner of an Arts Council Award and a Culture Vannin Award, Usha’s debut collection On Manannan’s Isle has been published in January 2014 bydpdotcom, UK. Forthcoming are a book of translations from the Sanskrit, Translations of the Divine Woman from Rasala Books India and a second collection of poetry, Night Sky Between the Stars from Cyberwit India. Usha is now working on her first novel.
