itstartswithhope:
A Day at the ZooBy Shabnam Nadiya
When they...
A Day at the Zoo
By Shabnam Nadiya
When they pulled the young man into the back of the truck
he banged his head twice –
once against the step, once against the bars of his cage.
He had been jack-hammering the streets with others of the same breed,
punctuating the thick summer air with gunshot slogans, sticks and stones,
trying to exorcise hawk-heads and jackal-butts.
Until tit-for-tatting green-and-blues, khakis and combat gear puppies
forwarded him: return to sender, address unknown.
We all wept.
Tear-gassed and blind we sipped our afternoon tea
and listened to the early evening news
remembering the young man
who was disappeared into the dark yawn of a truck.
The woman they pulled in by the hair
as she screeked and bird-flapped her way to nowhere.
Early middle-age, mustard bright sari,
mother of two, part time teacher
fulltime activist. Her left breast was
a secret earth-creature braving
the grasp of the left hand that was his:
black bandannaed, sunglasses awry,
husband of one, father of none,
full-time uniform.
Confusion was king as we watchers mourned. A fleeting glance
at the angry haloes enflaming the heads of
those in their final run to death:
nostrum for our desperate hearts.
This poem originally appeared in The Daily Star. Reprinted with the author’s permission.
