भ्वाइस खबर
Ashes Beneath the Snow: A War Elegy
Tomnath Uprety
Beneath the bruised sky,
A child with bandaged eyes gropes for dawn,
His cradle cracked by shells,
His lullabies lost in the siren’s wail.
The snow in Kyiv no longer sings;
It smothers the moans of the maimed,
Covering blood like a mother’s trembling hands,
A white veil over the red petals of pain.
Irony walks in boots across the ruins,
Preaching peace from the barrel of a gun,
While children learn the alphabet of fear
In the grammar of crumbling concrete.
O fathers who promised victory,
What is conquest if the price is
A child’s soft breath,
The light in her eyes replaced by dust?
Bombs bloom like monstrous flowers,
Petals of fire, pollens of shrapnel,
Whispering sermons of steel—
A spiritual plague disguised as power.
A boy limps on crutches carved from shattered doors,
His toy soldier buried beneath rubble,
His dreams soldered to the echoes of screams
That ripple through the cold dawn like broken hymns.
Philosophers spoke of just wars,
Yet justice bleeds on the lips of infants
Who taste soot instead of bread,
Milk turned to smoke in the blackened air.
A girl’s doll lies beheaded on the road,
Eyes glassy with the sky’s reflection,
Its silence screams of what humanity
Has bartered for a map’s hunger.
The snow is a silent prophet,
Preaching impermanence in flakes that fall,
Falling, falling, like the tears
Of mothers kneeling on scorched earth.
Spirit, rise from the ashes of the fatherland,
Teach these nations that borders are illusions,
That bombs cannot build eternity,
That true victory is the quiet breath of a child sleeping unafraid.
The irony of flags waving above mass graves,
The paradox of peace treaties signed with blood,
The bitter laughter of history repeating itself—
All echo in the wind that wanders the ruins.
Hear the sermon of silence,
Where once there was laughter and school bells,
Now, only the gospel of hunger,
The psalms of loneliness in orphaned hearts.
Will the generals ever see
The child who paints flowers with trembling hands
On bunker walls, dreaming of sunlight?
Or will they only count the land reclaimed
In ashes and amputations?
From Mariupol to Kharkiv,
The dawn is an unfinished prayer,
The rivers carry the stories of those
Whose names will never appear in parades.
May we learn, in this blood-soaked silence,
That the soul of a nation is not its land,
Nor the iron pride of conquests—
But the children who laugh under a free sky.
Let this poem be a candle,
A didactic flame against the dark machinery of war,
A soft rebellion against the iron tongues
That preach power while children bleed.
Let metaphors bloom,
Let hope rise like sap from burnt roots,
And may we, as a human race,
Choose gardens over graves,
Cradles over coffins,
And lullabies over sirens.
For in the end,
When the flags are folded,
And the cannons are silent,
Only the tears of children
Remain as the testament of what war truly is—
A lesson written in blood,
Whispered by the ashes beneath the snow.
(Under Secretary, Government of Nepal)
भ्वाइस खबर
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