Creator of beauty
Lord of loveliness
To whom shall one turn
In this hour of ugliness?
All the flowers of this garden
Are lying on the cold earth
Their innocent faces stamped
With the fright and loneliness
Of their abandonment.
Where shall one look
Lord of beauty and compassion
In this time of icy desolation?
On hearing the news of carnage
When I walked, head bowed,
Through a neighbourhood park
I found children playing happily
On the slides and swings
I swear in God’s name
I felt a deep remorse.
The courage to look at them
Left me instantly
Like the soul from a corpse.
I have sat through the night
With eyes neither open
Nor closed, as though petrified
In a twilight zone.
Lord of sunshine and light
What has happened
To all the beauty and compassion
You gifted to mankind?
The lamp You gave for light
Is now in hands
That believe in setting fire
As the answer for everything.
They burn everyone and anything
With even a trace of loveliness
Inside them.
Lord of lamp and light
Is the final flood?
The lighthouse has itself begun
To spew darkness
And spout blood.
The night has passed
In indescribable pain.
Today’s newspapers contain
Many pictures of the carnage
But the one I am glued to
Is that of a little girl
And a boy even smaller than her
Chaperoned by a soldier
As they emerge in tandem
From the cataclysm.
There are no books in their hands
But the little girl is holding
The little boy’s hands
With so much care
And confidence and strength
I can see a smile lighting up
On every martyr’s face
But most of all
On the lips of the Principal
And the teachers who died
For their sake.

— Ejaz Rahim

(The poet is former chief secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and ex-federal cabinet secretary. He is also the author of a poetry book ‘Safwat Ghaur and Other Poems’)

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2014