Culture & Society

Poems On War: The Original Sin

In the midst of the Russia-waged war in Ukraine, a poet reflects on war and human existence.

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French-Vietnamese photographer Henri Huet captured this shot in 1966
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In the modern world, our language is dominated by war.

Poets write of love amidst war.

Writers set their fiction in the cities torn by war.

Politician's vocabulary draws on war.

Modern societies are made with the bricks of war.

Capitalists sell war.

Consumers buy war.

Nations set war.

Newspapers and televisions broadcast war.

Our histories are at war.

Our geographies are at war.

From Kashmir to Palestine, childhood is bombed by war.

Since Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden,

our only existence is at war.

We read war.

We write war.

We see war.

We hear war.

We talk war.

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We feel war.

We breathe war.

(Mir Umar is from Kashmir, and graduated in English Literature from the University of Delhi.)

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