THE LAMENTATION OF CACHAR HILL

THE LAMENTATION OF CACHAR HILL

                                                     ~Lawrence S. Khawzawl

                                                          

Created beautifully as a Hill, with deep and green lusty forest

Animals of all kinds, inside, with tress and bamboos, ropes and flowers

Plains and valleys, rivers and streams that flows, with hilly breeze

 

Development and modernisation, they say, destroying trees and bamboos

Cutting earth for roads, excavating, digging and trenching using JCB

Trembling and shaking the earth, rocks and soil are shivering

 

Trees and bamboos are falling, digging out water, making the earth in distress

Helpless, comes monsoon with non-stop raining everywhere and always

It’s raining, with storm, thundering, lightning and unending bad-weather

 

It continues, landslide, mud slide, trees and bamboos falling

River flooded, rock sliding, blocking the roads, destroying houses

Be merciful, have compassion, we are still alive, mother and children in distress

 

Father is speechless, nothing to say or more, destroying the beautiful hills

Cutting trees and bamboos, collecting boulder from rivers

Digging the earth using JCB, stopping the origin of water

 

Killing birds and animals from the forest, and now I am in pain

I am trembling, in need of healing and weeping who needs comforter

In need of saviour and rescuer, that I am looking for them

 

O you PYF! Won’t you respond to the lamentation of the Cachar Hill?

The tress and bamboos, the forest and valleys, the soil and the rocks

Won’t you come forward to renew, rebuild and preserve and protect?

 

{This poem is written in memory of the Disaster that struck throughout Dima Hasao district (Cachar Hill) on 14^th May, 2022 which washed away many roads and railway tracks, with floods and landslides destroying many houses as well} 

 #The edited version is published at PYF CHT Synod Golden Jubilee Souvenir "EBENEZER"