atiguhya padma
12-01-2004, 12:43 PM
What is the sound of words that burn?
The leaves of folios
Shrinking and wasting away?
In Louvain,
Words burned for hours,
And flew into the air,
To die upon the breeze.
The leaders of nations
Coughed up careless words
That infected Europe.
The mouths of men
Like earth-openings,
Their words escaping
In air-locked capsules
From babbling pools of blood.
Mud-spattered craters
Catered for the words
Of drowning lives
At Louvain, the soldiers
Warmed themselves on historic
Sentences and time-worn
Passages and paragraphs.
When men destroy words
With such carelessness
Then the world’s conversation
Becomes a litany of conquest
And an absence of meaning.
The leaves of folios
Shrinking and wasting away?
In Louvain,
Words burned for hours,
And flew into the air,
To die upon the breeze.
The leaders of nations
Coughed up careless words
That infected Europe.
The mouths of men
Like earth-openings,
Their words escaping
In air-locked capsules
From babbling pools of blood.
Mud-spattered craters
Catered for the words
Of drowning lives
At Louvain, the soldiers
Warmed themselves on historic
Sentences and time-worn
Passages and paragraphs.
When men destroy words
With such carelessness
Then the world’s conversation
Becomes a litany of conquest
And an absence of meaning.