Partition

The region was splitting into two, one where

Papa was taking me in a bus so crowded,

My mother and sister and home were

In the other, behind us, all raped and dead.

I didn’t realise then, while they happened.

Only flames and cries I saw around our hut.

Shouts against our stay were sloganed,

And not just that, and not just that.

Buses crossed us, as we traveled. Papa told,

Welcome people were moving to places

where their religion, their majority ruled.

I noticed, as only I could, orphan faces.

Clutched in my hands, in that flounder

was the red bound book on renewal

from the library that was now in powder

and that that would not belong, even on arrival.

Sixty years had passed, since our moving;

Dailies remember every year our hardship.

Our countries are still fighting, houses burning,

Maybe they just can’t live in friendship.