Bina Sarkar Ellias 

• Poem 1: ​Peace
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• Poem 2: Santiniketan
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Peace
For Agha Shahid Ali
“They make a desolation and call it peace.”
 
Peace?
 
have we met?
do I know you?
 
are you
the proverbial lull 
before the storm?
 
are you the virgin
before… the rape?
...silence 
before the scream?
 
are you a bird song
on a tranquil morning 
singing softly
before you transmute
into a screeching hawk?
 
are you the rationale
of dialectics
before strident speeches 
of fascists, bigots 
and unreason 
tear our sanity apart?
 
are you grandma's tales
of honey and pickles
of halcyon days~
before you are stolen 
from innocuous jars
and mutated
into narratives of war?
 
are you idle chemicals
before you catalyse 
into deadly weapons
of mass destruction?
are you a placid drone
morphing into
a menacing toy for 
the world's warmongers?
 
are you the chrysalis
concealing 
and nurturing seeds 
of benign faith
that flower 
and proliferate~
that stealthily become
venomous weeds
of xenophobic hate?
 
are you paradise
in Kashmir, before 
it becomes hell~
of a flaming battleground
for scheming politicians?
are you a child waking to life
in Afghanistan or Syria
before a bomb 
bludgeons you
and your village?
 
are you the wings 
of dreams before 
they are burnt 
so you don't fly?
 
Peace? 
 
have we met? 
do I know you?
are you the desolation 
called Peace?

Santiniketan
 
in the still night
of Santiniketan
a red road rolls out,
astonished~
like Kali’s tongue.

Bina Sarkar Ellias (b. 1949) is a poet, fiction writer and art curator. She is also founder-editor-designer-publisher of International Gallerie, the award-winning global arts and ideas journal since 22 years. Her book of selected poems FUSE, was taught at Towson University, Maryland, USA, and has a Chinese edition. Her poems have been translated into French, Greek, Spanish, Arabic and Urdu. Her recent book of ekphrastic poems ‘When Seeing Is Believing’ has just been launched. She has received a Fellowship from the Asia Leadership Fellow Program, Japan, 2007, the Times Group Yami Women Achievers’ Award, Bombay, 2008, and the FICCI/FLO, Calcutta, 2013, Award for Excellence in her work. 
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