Monday, 26 May 2025

Sigh - A Lament for the Land That Once Breathed

Ah…

There was once a patch of earth,

Not large,

Not loud,

But rich with the music of green—

A place where crops once danced in wind-kissed rows,

Where every breeze carried the scent of harvest,

And sunlight kissed the soil

Like a mother kissing her sleeping child.


That land…

It laughed with my laughter,

Cradled my childhood steps.

Every scraped knee,

Every muddy footprint,

Every barefoot race beneath the summer sun—

Passed through that land,

Like time moving gently through memory.


That earth was more than ground—

It was cradle and canvas,

A living diary of dreams,

Of lullabies sung by wind through the wheat,

Of dragonflies darting through dusk.


So many stories—

So many whispered secrets

Were rooted deep within that soil.

It was the silent witness

To the birth of every season,

The keeper of my first wonder,

My first awe at rain,

My first prayer to a starlit sky.


And then…

One day,

Like a sigh lost in noise,

Everything changed.


Gone—

Were the blades of emerald that once swayed.

Gone—

The fragrance of new blooms

That once filled the morning like a hymn.


Now, in that place—

Only concrete towers rise,

Proud and blank-eyed.

Now there are rows upon rows

Of gray, breathless walls,

Iron gates and numbered doors—

No songs,

No shade,

No whispers of the earth.


Where once butterflies danced in drunken joy,

There now stands silence—

Sharp, cold, manufactured silence.

The hum of machines

Replaces the rustle of leaves.

The laughter of children

Smothered under glass and cement.


Beneath it all—

That patch of land remains,

Buried but not broken.

It still breathes,

Though faintly,

Its sighs muffled under the weight of our ambition.


It remembers.

Oh, it remembers.


The rains that once soaked its skin.

The seeds that once whispered life into its bones.

The plow’s soft caress.

The farmer’s muddy hands.

The flute played at dusk.

The songs sung to the moon.


Now, trapped under towering blocks of ambition,

It weeps in silence—

Its tears turning into roots

That no longer grow.


Where once the green rippled like laughter,

There is only stillness now—

Sterile, unyielding stillness.


No more butterflies

Chasing the light through mustard fields.

No more sunrises kissed by dew.

No more evenings glowing

With the orange blush of harvest.


That earth—

That sacred, breathing piece of home—

Now lies smothered

Beneath our progress,

Our pride,

Our hunger for height and shine.


All around—

Darkness.

Not the kind that falls with night,

But the kind that seeps

When memory is paved over.


No chirping of crickets,

No rustle of breeze through grain.

No scent of soil after rain.

Only shadows of what once was.


And I—

I walk through this city of stone

Holding my breath,

As if I, too,

Were buried under it all.


Oh, how the earth must ache—

Pressing its memories against cold concrete,

Still hoping,

Still dreaming

That one day,

We’ll listen again.


That one day,

We’ll lift the slabs of forgetfulness,

And remember

What it was

To walk barefoot

On living land.

No comments:

Post a Comment