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The beasts

A poem by Bobo Meitei on the unchanging nature of people, and how degraded we all have become, though we all say we living in a modern world.

The beasts

Trenches have been dug,
Deeper trenches have been dug.
More are to come,
More men are at work.
Now they have sandbags,
Sandbags to conceal human heads.
Behind them men have ducked down.

Their rifles glimmer,
Their shone rifles rest.
Then the orders cry,
The resting rifles crack.
Lives fall.

Soon makeshifts coffins arrive,
They arrive in helicopters,
They arrive with clean flags.
Fallen lives are no more visible.
But the sandbags are visible.
The rifles change hands.
Everybody knows the lives,
are in the makeshift coffins.
Everybody knows the coffins,
will be wrapped in flags.

The bullets didn’t know names,
They didn’t know flags either.
But they did what they were supposed to do.

They want more and more,
They need reasons,
The reason is land,
And they have to kill for that land.
The reason is dignity.
They deny other ,their dignity. .

Have they changed in centuries?
Nothing!
Have they changed in centuries?
Oh, yes! In appearance!
Have they changed in centuries?
Oh, yes! Their brutality!

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