Initiated through the same language,
Our tongues then of the same colour,
All that forgotten in this carnage,
Because our facades were a shade paler
Little requests and pleas fell on deaf ears,
Lost in translation they claimed,
Little did we know that our gory years,
Had left them, their senses maimed,
Refugees – that’s what they called us,
Each one trying to move our illiterate crowd,
Lost in translation – our new exodus,
Our heads lay bloody, but unbowed,
They claimed our identity, our closely held culture,
And they demeaned it and called it borrowed,
And our plight – they termed it a critical juncture,
Every moment was tracked, every lead was followed,
We came in peace, we spoke the common tongue,
But deaf ears cannot hear words lost in translation,
Even the stench of suffering that filled our sagging lungs,
Couldn’t outweigh what we felt seeing the familiars’ hesitation,
Like pawns in a game, we were moved all over their chess board,
Human rights, animal rights – none applied,
For the drones, that sat in those ivory towers poured,
Esoteric dialogue; Lost in translation, they decried,
Like the dead leaves falling off in autumn,
Unnoticed we were relegated to an inevitable fate,
A mere mention in an editorial column,
Lost in translation – Did the caption state.
AFFLATUS 