In the heaven on earth, now ravaged by war
In the snow kissed mountains, white eagles soar
A cobbled path snakes up the pine woods
Carrying the lost army of love who broods
T’was a day like any other in the clouds
Of cold and wind and terrors’ shrouds
That hid all hope and laughter and love
As the trucks of soldiers, through the villages drove
One such truck and the soldiers it carried
Unknown to their fate had been doomed to be buried
By yet another army who also bravely fought
For a land both, was their own, had been taught
A blast and a boom and a chilling loud shriek
Then blood and guts spilled on the oblique
Of soldiers now bereft of breath and soul
Lay maimed and burnt for a selfish nation’s goal
And one such soul that rose from that mayhem
Wandered within our dead people’s realm
He entered our gates, shrivelled, lost and scared
And with time, healed, as our brotherhood cared
Each morning he saw an unworldly sight
Of dead men in saffron, in green, yellow, brown and white
Singing and working away hand in hand
None envious or possessive of a piece of land
In the evenings he would stroll or sometimes fly
To faraway places at the edges of the sky
And wherever he reached he felt true peace
For in the dead men’s realm, all turmoils cease
A dead man owns no body, no wealth, no earth
Here, beliefs and religion and Gods are but mirth
For once we die we understand the satire
Of all that worldly men and nations desire
What is faith, what is family, what is nation indeed?
Nothing but the finite limit of love decreed
By more selfish men who speak a little louder than most
And create the worlds’ religious and topological border-post
And so his wounded and lost spirit was finally free
Of all false patriotism, struggle, the winning spree
In the dead men’s realm, that lay beyond the darkness
A soldier found light and broke free, inane war’s harness
***Written as an exercise at Write Club Bangalore on Utopia
Dreams Unlimited 