Distant Thunder

I sing of Famine amid bountiful harvests...
Granaries bulge with corn,
while mute,suffering multitudes wait-
gaunt .. wracked with hunger .
Convoys, trundle down highways,
bearing grain to distant battlefields-
past emaciated , sun-lashed bodies,
pathetically huddled...
beyond starvation...too weak to beg.

Little angels of mercy
‘unhonoured and unsung’
glide gently among the dying..
giving surcease -
then,
tenderly shutting eyes forever...
Their faith in a God -
all merciful ... infinitely loving -
shaken to the very roots.

Villages
lie desolate and abandoned -
not a living soul in sight.
Fields
once laden with Nature’s bounty
now reduced to
arid , blasted wasteland.

Enormous swathes of ground
lie strewn with
the rotting corpses and skeletons
of three million dead innocents.

Massive flocks of vultures
blotting out the sun-
swoop down to feed
on grisly carrion banquets .
Jackals, curs .. rodents,
in their millions,
rustle through the fields of death-
tearing at putrid flesh
crunching through whitened bone .

A monstrous pall of death
blankets the entire land.
The stench of a hell on earth
assails the very heavens

... High in the skies , a faint rumble
pierces the deathly stillness,
as vast armadas tear past -
in swift arrowing flight -
to unleash maelstroms of death and destruction
on the enemy
lurking beyond the lofty ranges
that loom -
a faint blue blur on the distant horizon.

With vaulting heart and soaring spirit -

I sing of Man’s boundless Inhumanity to Man
- that transcends all else.