“When This Pandemic Is Over”
When this pandemic is over
We will send you the bullets
You fired into our homes
We will pluck and send you the pellets
You shot into our eyes and bodies
We will send you the broken glasses
Teargas canisters
And our smoke-filled lungs.
When this pandemic is over
We will collect the broken pieces
And burned memories of our homes
We will sing them to the world
So loud, so loud!
Till it wakes you to your senses.
When this pandemic is over
We will haunt you in the middle of night
To show you the soaked handkerchief
On which a grandmother wept all her night
When her child was trapped inside a barn
Fighting you till his last breath and bullet
And then in the morning they both died.
When this pandemic is over
We will throng your courts
With these yet-to-be-born orphans
And those you orphaned
We will keep writing their names
On the walls of your court halls
Till one day their blood waters
Your conscience into life.
When this pandemic is over
We will go out and find our disappeared ones
We will dig mountains and search rivers
Till their bones or bodies are back with us
The children will meet their parents
And speak to their decayed bones
The mothers to their lost sons
Our tears will find existence
When this pandemic is over
–Kashmiri Jibraan Javid