MY HEART BREAKS

MY HEART BREAKS


My heart breaks when I behold,
Prisoners on a leash,
All naked, tugged by a girl,
Puffing her cigarette!

I feel ashamed when she views
Them without any clothes,
Pointing to their private parts,
Jeering so gleefully!

So was in Guantanamo
And so in Abu Ghraib.
So I will cry in anguish,
Wherever it may be!



*With apologies to William Wordsworth (1770-1850), who wrote the immortal:

“My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!”



*Pictures of Miss England, 21, a US soldier, splashed in newspapers, TV and internet all over the world, showed her viciously smiling and smoking while pointing at the genitalia of naked male prisoners.

* Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, US interrogation centres (torture prisons) gained world-wide notoriety in the aftermath of US attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq.

• Rhyme and meter scheme: abcb, 7-6-7-6. Initially written as item 848102, substituted on 25 March 2005 by entry 336924 in "WAR POETRY--award winner" . Reposted in the present form on 12 September 2008.



M C Gupta
12 May 2004