Written piece
Distant Echoes
Selloane Tseka
Lesotho
About this piece
The poem Distant Echoes was inspired by an ongoing war between Iran and US as well as Israel and Gaza both which resulted in the loss of children’s lives.
I have shown an overwhelming sense of helplessness that comes from watching the news on social media and TV yet unable to do
Distant Echoes
It was not because the mountain peaks lost their glistening white,
Or the cold piercing wind stopped blowing.
It wasn’t the neighing of horses that kept us up in the night,
But the distant rumbling of thunder and misery.
Cries of young ones reaching in the dark,
Haunted ghostly fingers, snatching away the innocent,
Confused, dirt covered faces in the rubble.
It was the stench of decay of modern civilization that stole warmth from our blankets.
Now we blow gently to the dying ambers to keep out the cold.
It was not because the world lost its rhythm or that the moon stood lonely in the sky.
It wasn’t the silence of birds and insects in the plains and forests.
It was the quiet before the falling of an old pine tree,
Disrupting the silence.
It creaked and groaned as it fell,
a great hurricane of wings took to the sky.
Nowhere is safe,
hope is gone,
and birds are no longer nesting.
Yesterday a woman screamed in the darkness.
‘A great eagle has taken my baby away.’
‘Snatched her in its claws and took off.’
Someone yelled.
“But birds of prey never steal children.”
“But this one did. It stole my baby girl.”
She then sank to the ground wailing.
“What shall we do when evil keeps winning?”