Eclipse?

 
The bells were
all ringing
the children
were singing
 
like a
sunday carnival
show
 
then bombs
started falling
’twas all quite
appalling
 

wasn’t any place
to go
 
*
 
The skies started
rumbling
people to tumbling
pandemonium
struck everywhere
 
buildings
got shaking
the grounds
kept quaking
no one
to help
or care
 

roofs started
smoking
people lay
choking
heard not
one human
sound
 

in eerie
disquiet
all went suddenly
quiet
as walls burnt
down to the
ground
 
*
 
In minutes
everywhere
big cities
lay bare
all to perish
in a trice
 
words had
not fended
deeds had
upended
faster than
a roll of
the dice
 
*
 
Hubris
and rage
had levelled
an age
not one knew
the what
or the why
 
earth
showed its
lesions
no more four
seasons
under a
blackening sky
 
*
 
The silence
grew deep
though dolphins
did leap
too late
for one and
all
 
the gods did
speak
in ire
and in pique
was none left
to heed
their call
 
plans all
in vain
they refashioned
again
all things
both great
and small
 
*
 
Nature does
care
and does her
repair
the planet
no worse
for the wear
 
it was
well understood
she would
what she
could
 
except we
we would be gone
for good
 

 
[©R.Kanth 2023]

Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).