POETRY (TEN RUPEE)

Ten-rupee

Writing of us, Rudyard Kipling said:

A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousands pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail

A day before the Bacha Khan University attack in Charsadda, little Shahzeb and his parents were killed in a bomb blast at the Karkhano Market in Peshawar. Shahzeb peering at us from his hoodie, clutched a ten-rupee note in his hand. I just couldn't help stop thinking of the ten-rupee that comes to haunt us every now and then. My ten-rupee, a poem, is dedicated to Shahzeb.

Front Line in the poem alludes to our hapless Peshawar.

By: Nasser Yousaf

Ten-rupee

A blast rips the Front Line apart
Smoke billows amid cries of distraught

Limbs littered are future foretold
Nought to write of the familiar sight

A small mound reveals a lad in a hoodie
With parents he is listed as lost

Haggard Time's revenge on the young soul
In death who holds on to his ten-rupee note

An eerie black fog envelopes the environs
After the child takes his strategic flight

Rampant bigotry always smites life
Crushing hopes under its morbid might

Times were less evil when Kipling wrote
Of the ten-rupee note that smirks and blights