Once The Nights Used To Be Of

Once the nights used to be of the lions, tigers, wolves, hyenas and other beasts But now the nights use to be of the wild cats and foxes And that too depleting And one day the woods will not stay it, Nor the wild animals. While burning the dead bodies on the ghats, the people used to lie in fear As for the attack by the wolves and jackals Which used to appear smelling the lifeless body of flesh But those days are almost gone now. Today everything looks it barren and bare, Hollow, shallow and destroyed, The wilds are devoid of greenery And the hills of their blue sunshine, The peacocks dance they not in the forests, Will all these turn into a phoenix? The classical scholars and pundits used to frown upon, Even marking the feathers dropped down, Putting scarecrows atop the buildings To drive these birds of prey far from, But now these birds are rarer, The hawks and the vultures. I do not know if these flora and fauna will go extinct, The asses see I not, not even the abandoned asses, Left on by the washermen, The horses see I them not as the carriages out of use And the stables empty, converted into. Only the foxes see I them howling sometimes, With the call of the wild, But the glare of the eyes almost gone now As they live not in the forests, In their natural habitats, ravaged and ravished by modern man Always in search of money and materials, As they live in zoos, newly-found homes.