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Again tonightThere is thunder and lightningA busy world is sound asleep.Screaming children and their crying mothers,Rebel sons and their silent fathers,Stoic daughters and their tired loversRocked to sleep by a quivering earthPerched on an axe blade.Sanjit Bhakta Pradhananga
(I)
The owl’s lament
Again tonight
There is thunder and lightning
A busy world is sound asleep.
Screaming children and their crying mothers,
Rebel sons and their silent fathers,
Stoic daughters and their tired lovers
Rocked to sleep by a quivering earth
Perched on an axe blade.
And for a hushed second
No one is going anywhere,
The night is deep
The silence so dark you could hear it like an
Echo.
And there are no bugles tonight
No beacons
Only mad drums thumping a color red,
And for a trembling second
Like a dagger thrust into a
Rupturing sack
The night spills out her giggling secrets
Onto quiet ears.
A busy world is sound asleep,
And when it stirs,
These rains will have washed
everything anew.
It will not matter
That again tonight
There was thunder and lightning.
(II)
What the thunder said
I have no patience
To carve and elegy
To a phantom
In a hyacinth garden
Or to brew a diatribe
Against the huddled masses of the dead
Walking uphill
On a thundering evening.
But listen, here is what the thunder said,
“Tomorrow’s rain has come out
To pour today,
Beware,
Be aware.”
Before it rumbled on,
Into Dhading.