Thursday 9 August 2012

Operation Green Hunt



This is not your land. The hills

Rock under flowing water, fern hanging

Over the pool where the fish rises

Blue sky filtered through branches.




This is not your land

The sacred hill where the gods of air and water live

The flight of the bird on the wing,

Shimmer of the sun on the water

They do not belong to you.



They never did.



Your machines of steel and anger

Would rip the heart out of the earth,

Rip the old gods from their hills and forests.

Your greed fuels your machines

Your uniformed minions, with guns in their hands

Your uniformed minions who after all are only men

As we are men, and women



Earth’s Children, we.



Your greed would make an end to everything we have

Everything we live for

But this is not your land

And we will not pay the price for your greed

And we will not go away.



No.



We will not go easily, no, we will not go easily.

We will not go easily, into the dreadful night.



This is not your land, no this is not your land

Our ancestors have lived here

The old gods have lived here

Since before the days when the hills were young.



Yet you want what is not yours

You try to take what is not yours

And death is all you offer us

And death is something we understand.

No, we will not go easily

Though you do what you will

Offer us your platitudes, feed us with

Words.



Your words

Your words are like your promises

Empty.

Empty like the eyes of the skull on the dry rock

Empty as the scars on the earth

Empty like the bellies of our children

When your machines have moved on.




But when we pick up the gun

The gun is not empty.

Our forests, our villages

Our land, our gods

Our world, not empty.



Call us what you will

Red terrorist, Maoist, Anti-national

Call us what you will, but

Our world is not empty.

We will pay with our blood

Yes we will pay with our blood

We will water the land with our blood



And it will be our land.

Our words, our promises

Are not empty.


Copyright B Purkayastha 2011/12

Note:
 Operation Green Hunt is the Indian Government's war against its own rural poor living in the forest areas of the nation, in order to take their lands and hand it over to mining companies in the guise of "fighting Maoism". The woman in the picture is one of the Maoist guerrillas whom the so-called Prime Minister of the nation has called its "greatest internal security threat"; greater than corruption, overpopulation, a crumbling infrastructure, and environmental collapse put together. Not a surprise: the Maoists stand in the way of crony-capitalist mining corporations and their profits.


4 comments:

  1. Very moving poetry. Especially for those of us who know a little of whats happening.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sad to know how often governments disregard human beings, mainly the unfavoured, with the purpose of getting more and more money...

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  3. thank you Bill
    Blessed are Earth's children!
    the vulture capitalists, not so much ...
    Carina

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think I have seen this poem before. It is so very powerful. The woman in the picture doesn't look particularly scary.

    ReplyDelete

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