Halcyon Days at AMU
&
Reflections on Riots
of Oct.1961
By
Mirza A. Beg
August 8,
2012
Published; October 17, 2012
Sir Syed Day magazine of Aligarh
Alumni association
Introduction
Life at
Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was much simpler in the early 1960s. Or so it
seems, from the vantage of five
decades in the evening of a long life. Those days are reminiscent of a long autobiographical
movie, with panoramic scenes rich in
the cast of characters; some intimate and essential to the story; others make cameo
appearances as markers of time. Occasionally when I hear about old friends, images emerge from the enveloping mist of a bygone
era, sporadically crisp and clear, often as apparitions communicating in the
quietness of thoughts.
At the time
AMU was considered a large residential university with about 5,000 students. It has been dwarfed by the present
strength of more than 30,000. Of the 5,000
students, about 3,000 lived in the hostels,
and about 2,000, were non resident students. Students living adjacent
to the university were classed as (NRSC-A) and those living in the old Aligarh city, a couple of miles away were (NRSC-B).
Though
large, AMU had a quality of a small cozy
place, because of its unique
tradition. A simple act of salutation to strangers when our paths crossed broke
the ice. Salamwlaikum, answered by an
almost simultaneous Salamwalikum was amazingly binding. Strangers were
strangers no more, the strangeness
melted away. Those with whom our paths crossed every day,
hurrying from class to class became unspoken friends even if we did not know
their names. I have been to scores of universities around the world, but have not seen anything like it. After leaving
the university in 1962, I came back for
a visit a year later with a friend from Lucknow University.
Walking around the campus, so many
people greeted me. Many even stopped to inquire about my health and long absence, as if they missed me. Impressed, my friend commented,
“You must have been very popular.” I simply replied,
“This is AMU, every one is as
popular.”
The flow of life at
AMU
AMU’s academic
calendar was a decagonal (ten sided) cycle. It started with admission, followed by introduction,
election, Dassehra vacation, examination,
winter vacation, exhibition, preparation,
followed by the final examination and a long summer vacation.
The year
started with admissions of fresh new students in July. It was much anticipated by
the returning students, particularly
by the half baked second year seniors,
looking forward to about two weeks of “introduction”,
when these newly minted seniors, did
to others what was done to them the year before. Occasionally, it was a harrowing experience for some new
students, but mostly it was mild
ragging that did not cause permanent scars. To make up for the ragging, well meaning senior students some times invited
the juniors for tea. September was the
start of election fever that culminated with election for the office bearers of
the Students Union followed by Dassehra vacation. Coming back from vacation was
a time for some serious studying for the midterm examination in December, followed by a much needed winter vacation that
brought in the New Year. Classes started again in January. We looked forward to
the annual exhibition on the outskirts of the old Aligarh city in early February. It was a time
for week long revelry. Evenings spent with friends dressed in the required AMU
uniform, black shervani (buttoned-up
long coat). It was a time of seeing and being seen,
stealing a glance or two at the denizens of the AMU girls college (Abdullah
Hall). It was a thrill to have the glance returned with a smile. Almost every
one indulged in the culinary delight of the famous Kababs and Parathas dripping
with oil, washed down with sweet hot
tea to avoid sore throat. Warm March winds ushered in the time for serious
preparation for the approaching final examination. They took place from mid
April to early May, followed by a much
anticipated summer vacation.
This cycle repeated
every year. The graduating old faces departed in May to face the challenges of
life in the world beyond, making way
for fresh young faces arriving in July. However for a few seniors, building seniority was a calling in itself. They managed
to hang on to become fixtures at AMU as super seniors,
as if they were tenured senior students. They held court as arbiters of AMU
traditions.
Election for the
AMU Students Union
Of this
cycle the most colorful were the elections. Most students,
including me did not know or care for the intricacies of the university politics, if there was one,
and were oblivious to the existence of two ideological groups, allegedly active behind the scenes. The Student’s
Islamic Organization, ostensibly an
arm of the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Students Federation,
ostensibly an arm of the Communist party. One heard of behind the scene maneuverings
of these groups, mostly at the time
of the Student’s Union elections held in early October. Among the many
candidates for president, the two
better known and financed were often rumored to be supported by these groups.
The most
important and hotly contested position was the presidents’. Other positions
were vice president, secretary, and ten cabinet members. There had been some
legendary presidents who had made a name for themselves in late1950s, such as Saeed “Anda” and Abidullah
Ghazi. The post was considered to be a possible stepping
stone to a future in politics.
I had
enjoyed the general elections of 1952 and 1957 for the UP legislature and the
parliament with childish curiosity and enthusiasm. They were a serious affair
with a festive veneer of musical propaganda and rhyming ditties in an effort to
reach an uneducated and uniformed populace.
But the elections
for the Students Union were in a class by themselves,
an experience to remember. They were urbane when face to face, but the pamphleteering was often cleaver and
occasionally acerbic. Active canvassing period
was limited to the last two weeks of September. Attired in black shervani and
topi, the candidates made rounds of
the hostels and the nonresident student’s centers. As the election grew closer, especially in the last few days, the activity reached a fever pitch. We looked
forward to cleverly devised pamphlets aimed at giving the candidates a positive
image with enumerated qualifications. Some of them were very creative, such as mimicking a telegram or a postcard slipped
under our doors in the middle of the night. The most dreaded and inventive were
the pamphlets deriding the opposing candidate with biting wit, especially on the eve of the election, so that the other party did not have time to
respond. They were popularly known as “Anti” for anti-propaganda.
I had
enjoyed the commotion of two elections,
by the time the third election in October 1961 came around, we knew what to expect,
and were looking forward to the wit and cleaver barbs. In the beginning it did
not appear to be much different than the earlier ones,
though there were forces at work behind the scenes that would have momentous
consequences. A difference did emerge,
and in retrospect, it turned out to
be consequential. For the first time a Hindu candidate was also contesting for
president. If my faded memory serves,
his name was Iqbal Singh.
AMU, as the name indicates was founded as MAO College
in 1875 by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan to bring modern western education to the
educationally back sliding Muslim community.
So a vast majority of the students are Muslims,
and as a norm, no Hindu had ever
contested the presidency before,
though traditionally there was at least one Hindu elected to the cabinet.
I had known
Iqbal Singh cursorily from my Morrison
Court days. For a short time,
he lived with Amar Singh whom I knew a bit better. They lived a few rooms away
from mine. I remember his name only because of what happened later. The other
presidential candidate was insipid at best. I do not remember his name.
Attack on the
University on October 3, 1961
Following
is my recollection, albeit a bit
faded account of the events. Memories,
especially with the passage of half a century are likely to have gaps and may
be at variance with the memory and personal experiences of others.
Finally the
voting took place on the1st of October,
it was an uneventful day. The results were declared rather late that night, and as expected the Muslim candidate won the presidency.
The next day was Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. It was normal,
except what I heard from Kalyan Singh,
a Sikh friend in my geology class,
who lived in the Ziauddin Hostel. He casually told me that some altercation had
taken place in his Hostel in the wee hours of the morning. That evening I did
hear that some shots may have been fired,
but no one was injured. Unwelcome news indeed. We thought,
it was just an after election stupidity emanating from a tradition gone awry - teasing
the loosing candidate by taking out a fake funeral procession.
On the 3rd
of October in the morning, we did
notice that our mathematics class was less than full. My section of the geology
class consisted of only three students,
of which Kalyan Singh and I were present,
but my friend Ramesh Tayal who lived in the city was absent. The significance of
the low attendance dawned on us later in the day. It was due to the absence of non-resident
students from the city. My last class was in the physics department at the
periphery of the main campus.
We came out
of the physics class at about 2 PM and noticed that the campus looked ghostly
quiet. Some one told us that the university had been attacked by a large Hindu
mob from the city and they had burned the Shamshad market,
the popular and only shopping street next to the university. It was almost next
door to the Aftab Hostel, where I
lived. Reflexively, I ran towards my
room with a cavalcade of thoughts crowding my mind,
including the possibility of my burned ransacked room. Breathless, I reached the hostel. It was a relief to see the serene
building as I had left in the morning. I saw some students running towards the
Shamshad market with long bamboo sticks used for holding up our ubiquitous mosquito
nets, a nightly refuge from the teaming
buzzing Aligarh
mosquitoes. I ran to my room and pulled out a stick from my mosquito net and
ran towards the Shamshad market, to
join what I considered to be a student protection squad against the attackers.
On the way
I met my senior and a close friend,
Haris Bhai (Haris Ansari). It turned out that the attacking mob from the city
was long gone, but we saw some university
students venting their frustration on a dilapidated shop,
presumably belonging to Hindus. Some students were trying to pry and break the
lock on its weather beaten wooden doors. A few students,
including Haris Bhai and I instinctively felt the injustice of the mindless
revenge and jumped in front of the shop to shield it.
We did
succeed in saving that poor shop from the reprisal by the madness of infecting sectarian
anger. The crowd moved on. We also moved on and saw some partly damaged
building fronts and blackened shutters of the popular Friends Book Depot owned
by Muslims. Apparently the mob from the city had tried to set fire to them.
Further down the road we were shocked to see the ransacked Rama Book Depot and
Krishna Book Depot. As the name indicated,
they were owned by Hindus. I had been to these stores many times. The books
were strewn in front of the broken doors,
as if staring at me, in protest at
the indignity heaped on these repositories of knowledge and wisdom, used to a place of respect on book shelves. No apparent
damage was done to the businesses further down the road and to the university
buildings and hostels.
Though most
of us including the late arriving reporters had not witnessed the attack, in the charged communal atmosphere, it was easy to surmise that the Hindu mob from the
city had run out of steam and did not enter the AMU campus doing only minor
damage to the Muslim business establishments. And the looting of the Rama and
the Krishna book depots was done by the vengeful
Muslim students from the university. In the emotionally taxing environment, the conclusions seemed obvious.
Student life in the
aftermath of the attack
We returned
to our hostels, with mixed feelings of
sadness over the destruction of the book stores,
and anxiety over our safety. Those were the days without the instruments of
mass communications - no telephones or even radios in the rooms. If the
authorities made an effort to console and guide the students, I am not aware of it. Obviously the authorities
knew more, but perhaps were busy
devising plans for the protection for the students with the district administration.
With the setting sun, we feared that
the mob from the city would return in the darkness of night to attack the
hostels. With no means of instant communication,
the hostels were like isolated islands shrouded in the dark oppressive quietness
of the night.
In our charged
imaginations, a possible massacre
was not out of the question. Most of the residence halls were quadrangles with
one or two gated entrances, such as
SS Hall. Even the newer hostels such as Ziauddin and Saifi were enclosed
structures. But the three hostels closest to the main road, MacDonald,
Aftab and Mumtaz were three sided graceful structures with verandahs adorned
with Moorish arches. The fourth side was open to the road separated by an
ornamental iron fence.
In
frustration, some even criticized
the bad design of our hostel,
suggesting it should have been a fortress like closed quadrangle. Forgetting the
irony that we took pride in the aesthetics of the aftab hostel, unlike those cooped up in closed quadrangles. Fear
changed the perception and the cooped up design looked safer.
We felt
completely exposed and vulnerable. Again those were the days when violence
meant fist-a-cuff. We did not have,
nor did we imagine anyone should have a revolver or a gun. Some one suggested
that there was a big pile of broken bricks from some collapsed old structure, behind our hostel. Within minutes we got to work
and carried loads of broken brick to the roof of Aftab hostel. We were not sure
how effective brick throwing would be against the invading mob with fire arms. It
was a good way to feel useful and use up our youthful adrenalin.
Tired, after hard physical work,
I fell in deep sleep. Waking up next morning,
it took a few seconds to be jarred by the returning memory of the eventful
yesterday and the anxiety of a night time attack. I was still alive, the hostel was still there and nothing untoward had
happened, at least not in our little
corner of the world. It was hard to believe that yesterday was not just a bad dream.
The October sky was a brilliant azure blue,
even though we felt in our bones that the horizons were red with turmoil.
Apparently every one assumed that there would be no classes and therefore there
weren’t. There were rumors that hundreds of Muslims had been killed in the old Aligarh city. It was not deemed
safe to travel as the miscreants may have carried the virus to other cities
spreading mayhem from town to town.
Later that
day a police constable showed up at my room,
with a letter from the District Magistrate (Collector),
Mr. Joshi inviting me to his office in the collectorate. I knew he was my
father’s colleague at an earlier posting and apparently my father had called
him. He offered to send me home accompanied by a police constable to navigate the
long journey home. I felt irritated by the offer. I thought he was not doing
his job of saving the innocent victims in the city. I felt that a strong
district magistrate had enormous authority and could have nipped the rioters at
the first sign of trouble. In solidarity with my friends who I felt were
trapped, I declined the offer and
came back to Aftab hostel and my other friends in other hostels in similar
predicament.
The first
thing on everyone’s mind was to inform their worried families of their safety. Long
lines formed at the telegraph office as soon as it opened. Telegraphic shorthand
in English is not everyone’s forte. Many students sent a crisp though
unintended alarming message home,
“still alive”. Aligarians are known for their sense of humor, gallows humor was rife. There was an undercurrent
of subdued panic, based on the
rumors of hundreds of deaths in the city. Some students mispronounced the unfamiliar
word “Panic”; others did it intentionally with a broad smile.
Mr. Joshi
informed my father that I was safe and would be coming home shortly. In a
couple of days the papers reported that the riots had been quelled and it was
safe to travel. AMU was closed for about ten days. We went home. The journey
was charged with consternation, but
uneventful.
There were
two Hindu students in our hostel of eightyeight. Des Raj was much senior to me.
He was a research scholar probably in political science and was teaching part-time
at a local college. Dhyan Prakash was a year junior to me and we knew each
other well. We were mindful of their emotional well being,
and made an effort to make them feel a part of us in these terribly emotionally
divisive times.
All my life
I had attended schools with an overwhelming majority of Hindu kids. Almost all
of my school friends from school days were Hindus. Many of them are still
cherished friends after many decades. So even though AMU hostels were demographically
overwhelmingly Muslim, I had many
Hindu friends, mostly my class
fellows from different hostels. Some names are still fresh in my mind - Sushil Tomar, Kalyan Singh,
Ramesh Tayal, Ravindra Rustagi, Vinod Singh,
Ambrish Kumar. Ravi Rustagi remained a close friend until he passed away a few
years ago in Australia
and Ramesh Tayal and I still correspond.
I did not
see them until after the vacations, when
the University finally opened in mid-October. What ever residue that remained
in the minds of the students was gone and we were close as ever.
Many newspapers
were very critical of the university. They blamed AMU for the inculcated communal
atmosphere, based on the election
results, appearing to justify the
riots in the city. The photographs of the ransacked Rama and Krishna Book
Depots were used as exhibits of vandalism. They had built up a case, completely ignoring the planning by the interested
parties in the old Aligarh
city to use the inevitable results as a pretext to engineer the planned carnage.
K L Shrimali, the new education minister
in the Central Government, accused AMU
of communalism. When informed that there was a very strong influence of the
communist party at the university,
he scoffed that they are communal communists. Disheartened at being battered by
a partisan press, we felt much
better when Chnchal Sarkar of “The Statesman” a respected news paper spent time
interviewing students at the university and the citizens of the old city. He
published two incisive articles on November 6th and 7th. It
gave some respite to AMU. Sarkar passed away in October 2005.
Engineering of the
1961 riots
Many books
and articles have been written on the subject.
The following analysis is gleaned from an excellent book by Paul R.
Brass, “The production of
Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India,
published in 2003”; and an excellent analysis in the report by the India Policy
Institute, published on the internet
in January 2004. “Communal riots in India: A Sketch of History and
Causes.” (www.indiapolicy.sabhlokcity.com/.../lbs-comm-notes.doc
- India
In the wake
of the British occupation of India
for three centuries ending in 1947,
the ruling class of Muslims was thrown off kilter. The Aligarh movement was started by Sir Syed to
help Muslims retain their Islamic moorings while regaining their footing in the
flow of history. He started the MAO
College in 1875 to check
the backsliding and help them join the modern scientific trend. Hindus were not
only welcome, but many helped him in
his efforts.
Soon after
the MAO College
became Aligarh Muslim University
in 1920. The idea of imminent freedom for India from the British Raj was in
the air. Sectarian forces were also working overtime and the specter of
separatism was on the rise. The popular belief with some justification is that
hatred germinated under the aegis of the British policy of divide and rule. The
Pakistan Movement of 1930s and 40s became a potent force and did a lasting
damage to the amity between the two communities. Many students and faculty at
AMU bought into the two nation theory and were active in the creation of Pakistan. This
left a very deep animus to wards AMU among many Hindus.
Aligarh had a sizable Muslim Population. It
diminished after the partition. But over
the years it has gradually increased by accretion. Muslims educated at AMU and
the AMU faculty have settled down in new neighborhoods close to the university.
AMU being a residential university,
it legally gives preferences to students educated at AMU in coveted
professional courses. With a stiff competition for professional education in India many
Hindu students have also gravitated to AMU to qualify for the professional
courses in the internal quota. Most of these students live away from the campus
and have not been able to integrate in the residential student body. The local Hindu colleges have tried many
times, to swamp AMU demographically
by getting a change in the AMU charter,
to get affiliated, thus becoming a
majority.
With this
background the Student Union election of 1961 became a watershed. The
resentments were simmering. The Hindu communal class’ resistance to AMU
was well established and the Muslim communal resistance to Hindu incursion in
AMU had grown over the years. Growing Hindu and Muslim communalism
symbiotically found sustenance in exaggerated and often invented grievances.
Usually the Student Union
election was contested by candidates from the right and the left of the
political spectrum who happened to be Muslims. In1961,
the sectarian Hindu forces decided to put up candidates for all the posts of
the Students Union knowing that Muslim vote would be divided among many
Muslims. It became apparent to the rightwing Muslims,
that with about 40 percent Hindu students the Muslim vote would be divided and
the Hindus will sweep the elections,
particularly the coveted presidency. A
successful effort was mounted to make all Muslim candidates withdraw leaving a
single insipid consensus candidate for each office.
The stage was set for the clash
of two communalisms with a foregone conclusion. In the course of time, had an accomplished Hindu student contested the
presidency it would have been notable and a positive evolution. But the way it
was planned by the communal BJP minded Hindus was diabolically cleaver. They
relied on the knee jerk push back by the myopic Muslim communalists. The dice was
cast. If a Hindu candidate won with the agenda of harming the tranquility of
AMU, so much the better, but as expected if he lost,
it was trumped up as causes belie. An average student had no inkling of the
gathering storm. The authorities were also caught napping.
After the contrived post election
incident at the Ziauddin Hostel,
early morning on the 2nd of October authorities should have been
more vigilant. The propaganda in the colleges of the old city was allowed to
fester. It resulted in the attack on the university. As it turned out it was
only a side show to malign the AMU,
the real atrocities were committed in killing innocent people in the city. The
official figures were fifteen innocent people killed and hundreds injured, of which an overwhelming number were Muslims.
The
authorities had clamped a curfew on the town. That is the least they could have
done. As it often happens they called the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC)
for help to oversee the curfew. One may think that people would feel safer. But
far from it, the record of the PAC
has been blatantly anti-minorities over the years. So much so that in mid the1950’s
commenting on the role of the PAC in a case before the court, Justice Ananand Narain Mulla of the Allahabad High
Court (1954-61) is said to have included a comment in his judgment, that the UP police was the most organized group of
Thugs (goondas) in the state.
It has been
proven time and again, that Muslims
do not fear their Hindu neighbors with whom they have lived in harmony, and most of us have experienced it all our lives.
The problem arises when the riots are engineered by vested communal interest
and the police particularly the highly partisan PAC is called. That is when the
real atrocities take place, as it
has been conclusively proven by the hundreds of photographs published internationally
as evidence in the February- March 2002 Gujarat massacre. The published photographs
show the miscreants throwing fire bombs protected behind the police lines
towards the cordoned off hapless Muslims.
A long view
It was a
lesson to me that the riots were engineered by a very small coterie of vested
interest waiting to find a cause, or
invent one when needed. Knowing the intensity and passion of the Student Union
elections, they engineered a cause
and when successful fanned the flames. All of my Hindu friends and teachers
were good to me and remained my friends. Their attitude towards me was the same
before and after the riots.
After
graduating from AMU I joined Roorkee
University for my master’s
degree. In a class of ten students,
to my pleasant surprise, I found two
friends from my batch at AMU, Kalyam
Singh a Sikh and Ravi Rutagi a Hindu of merchant cast. There were seven other
students, three from BHU and one
each from Lucknow,
Jaipur and Patna
universities. I was the lone Muslim. In the beginning there was a silent
competition among us as flag bearers of our universities. Ravi
and Kalyan were even more concerned and enthusiastic than me not to let AMU
down. And succeed we did.
The problem
of sectarianism (communalism) is endemic all over the world. It manifests it
self as tribalism in African countries,
as religious conflict in European countries up until the 19th
century, as racism in the United
States, and as communalism in
Pakistan India, Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar) and other countries.
Rising from
medieval civilization based on uniformity of power structure, the molding of a modern secular nation is
difficult. It becomes that much more challenging after a long period of
colonialism, especially when the
society is economically poor and there is competition for meager resources. In India the
religious divide between Hindus and Muslims and the cast divide among the upper
and lower cast Hindus and the untouchables has been a bane to the progress of
the nation. Yet India
has adhered to secularism under very difficult circumstances.
There is no
wall of separation between the state and religion in the Indian constitution.
The state is supposed to be neutral,
yet most people often vote on the basis of caste. In the Indian social milieu
religion is supposed to act as a motivating positive force, not a force against other religions. But the bane
of democracies is that unscrupulous politicians exploit religion to their
selfish ends, injuring the fabric of
the nation.
After the Aligarh riots of 1961,
I found myself caught in the riots in Calcutta, twice. The first time it was in January 1964 while
on a geological tour as a student; and again in January 1967 as a faculty in
charge of the students. Both the times I was the only Muslim among my colleagues.
The riots in Calcutta
were intense. They were sparked by the flooding of Hindu refugees from the
riots in the erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) resulting from the
atrocities on the Hindus by a Muslim majority. Obviously the times were tense, but the bonds of friendship and decency were a lot
stronger than the beckoning force of sectarianism. I never felt threatened.
Though there were some who tried to provoke me,
but my Hindu friends stood by me.
Time is a
friend as well as a foe. The passage of time often smoothes the sharp edges of
the sad events and diminishes the sting,
though memories remain, but in the
process it also robs us of the innocence of the idyllic days of our youth.
As old men
having lost the innocence we become cynical and lose trust in the innate
goodness that is significant part of humanity. Young people do damage out of
inexperience and foolishness. Old people know better,
therefore they are guilty of criminal selfishness.
It does not
have to be this way. Germany
and France
have fought three increasingly horrible wars within a period of seventy years -
The War of 1870, The First World War
(1914-18) and the most horrible of all wars The Second World War (1939-45).
Making them the most hated enemy of each other. Nobody could have predicted
that within a couple of generations they would be the best of friends with open
borders and the most important bull work of the Economic Union of modern
peaceful Europe.
Yet the
hatred of what we consider “the other” continues. I keep reading about mayhem
in many parts of the world from the Northern
Ireland and Bosnia
in Europe to endemic riots and wars in many parts of Asia and Africa.
These fault lines are not only racial,
but religious and within religions, casts
and tribes. The solutions are so obvious. Countries that treat there citizens with
justice do better economically. Larger countries do even better. The
divisiveness can be ameliorated with cooperation that enhances economic
development. According to a well known aphorism,
“A rising tide lifts all boats”. But time and again the vested interests are
able to invoke our baser nature and cause havoc on other humans caught in a vicious
cycle of revenge with self-serving narratives of who started it.
I hope some
day the world would be a better place for our children,
but in the near future it is disheartening. I wrote the following lines about
four years ago to express this conundrum.
Elusive
thoughts at Midnight
Mirza A. Beg
April 3rd, 2008
Miiddle of the night
Is never perfectly dark
The restful dark
Of deep slumber
Stray eerie light seeps in
From the streets of the
Smoldering day, from the
Tormented world beyond
Eyelids quiver with twilight
Of wakeful concerns of the day,
Of wars, real and imagined
Of inhumanity and lost friends
Inducing an amorphous ache
From myriad hazy sources
Flooding the heart and mind
And engulfing the soul
With countless Images
Of tortured bodies
Of hungry faces
Of loss and injustice
Of slings and arrows
Of lost opportunities
Of what could have been
Should have been, but is not
In the name of
Egotistic power
Misbegotten ideology
And misused religion
In the deathly stillness
Of a body, dormant
The restless mind soars
To resonate with the spirit
Inspiring visions
Of possibilities of peace
Just and humane
Clear and concise
To capture lost opportunities
Transcending arrogance and pride
To mend the frayed fabric
And make shattered souls, whole
Slowly the sleep returns
To cloud the vision
Clarity dissolves in a mist
Leaving only a few kernels
Morning is melancholy
I stare at a blank page
Failing to capture that
Fleeting flawless vision
