Beautiful

Lying abed, drifting down the river of stars

That cross between the lands of Sleep and Dream

I had a strange and curious fancy.

I saw before me –

A grey and iron plain

With grass all withered dry, blessed with just one tree

Bare branches lifted to an iron sky;

The skeleton of a tree, more than a tree.

The barbed wire on posts went to the horizon

And came sweeping back again

In lines as orderly as soldiers on parade.

And all on that grey plain was a mass, a horde, a multitude

Of people; grey as the air, grey as the sky

With the grey of hopelessness in their eyes.

Ragged as the day, they stood in straggling lines

Or quietly faded away.

And there before them, I

Like a god, above them all

Standing tall.

And I knew I had the power

Of life, of death, in that grey plain,

The power of gun, the power of my pen

The power of the badge upon my chest,

To give, and to take away.

They looked at me with frightened eyes

And I had charge of their lives –

And I was beautiful.

And they –

The dregs of the earth –

Nigger, Jude, Untermensch, Hadji,

Gook, Injun, Raghead, Spic

The beggar with the ragged coat

And the two-legged beast

Wearing a kaffiyeh in black and white.

They were not beautiful.

And I wiped them out

From the field

Under my shining boots. They vanished

With hardly a cry

Like fog in the morning wind

Ugly, dirty, hopeless

They deserved to go.

And then I stood

Victorious on the plain

Alone, justified

But there was nobody to see

Nobody to fear me

I was no longer

Beautiful.

Copyright B Purkayastha 2014

Source