Of Crimes Against Humanity
K. Radhakumar *
Vultures circle overhead.
A carcass on the ground!
The TV camera captures two hyenas.
The dirty animals cry
And I agree with the commentator
A hyena has a cry like a human laugh.
Their eyes have a hungry look
And lunch smells good.
The two gobble food without any fork and knife.
The cameraman focuses his camera on
A pack of wild dogs
Just arriving on the scene;
The dogs smell a buffalo.
The carcass is
The bone of contention
Of the two group of wild animals
And the two fight over the carcass
Like the humans do over
A few square kilometers of no-man's-land
Political differences
Religious affiliations...
The Trojan War for Helen of Troy?
A wild dog is no match
For a hyena
In a one-to-one confrontation
But the wild dogs fight as a team.
I spend the whole evening glued to the TV –
The Animal Planet channel –
And I learn many things
For the commentator and the cameraman
Do excellent service.
What a pity!
My distant and not-so-distant relatives
In the animal kingdom have no facility
To learn a story on camera.
No morning paper is published in the woods
But there are no strange happenings.
A minor raped by a man in his late forties
Life sentence for the rapist
Attempts at rape
Increase in the number of reported rapes
A cure for AIDS
I always read the morning paper
Over a cup of tea.
There has been no change in this place.
* Poem written by K. Radhakumar which was published at The Sangai Express
This poem was webcasted on March 17, 2019.
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