The Very Imminent Death of a Country {a poem for Pakistan}

Only because the Truth shall set us free.
A poem the time for which has come.

You are dying
as you are.

And though I was
once a part of you,
I no longer
identify you
beyond a name
and a shape
on ordinary colored paper.
You're a map upon a map -
all about to disintegrate.

You are no longer the country
that gave me my identity.
Before you rob me
of who I could be
- a human,
a free, alive human -
I shall go.

And though now
I shall not
have a home
that I call home,
perhaps in your destruction,
your inevitable, obvious, fast-approaching, complete annihilation,
I shall learn a lesson.

That though I have loved you
with infinite passion,
with selfless abandon,
and with little bits of service,
it
ultimately
is neither about foolish love nor emotion.
That we, human colonies, create nations
and change maps
to allow our human selves
to be free.
That is the aim of a state.
Any state of being -
to be
must be
an inching towards human freedom. Remember!

Yet you
have housed
too many caged hearts.
You are not,
as we imagined,
our Land of Purity.

You are the Land of Lesson.

The lesson that land maketh, but not really maketh, the Man.
That land, indeed, is a manifestation
of Man.
That names are essential, they have power,
but not above and beyond Man's deepest intent.
You are no Land of The Pure.

You
have housed
too many ill minds.
Who thought
that hiding beneath
your beneficial cloak
was sufficient.
Who thought
that robbing you
and hurting you
will pass unnoticed
by forces that are greater
than both you, and I, the Human.

I will watch the imminent death
by destruction
of the sick intentions
of those
to whom 5000 years of history
taught nothing.
Alas!

Yet, you know,
you are not
above
and beyond
the will of a Human.

You are
the will
of everyday Humans
solidified as Earth.
In your destruction,
your imminent, unavoidable, on-the-horizon, complete annihilation,
the illness of many sick minds shall die too.
You will burn, completely.

But not forever.
You will rise, again
with fewer
yet more enlightened hearts.
Wounded by Truth,
they didn't see in time.

On that day I shall return.
I will embrace your new, raw self.
You a new country,
on the way to becoming
what you were meant to be.
Not dark and evil as you are
right now.
I will return
and embrace you.
For that day,
you shall have
gone through
the alchemical
transformation
that went incomplete
at your birth.

I shall have burnt with you, away from you,
Homeless waif,
all this while.
For you were and you are
meant to be
the realization of me:
The Human
The Free
The Heart of the Pure.

- RA
January 28, 2008