Two Friends - Two Lives Less

On this day
when gentle one,
you were born,
amidst distant white stone hills
where gypsies used to sing and dance,
fetid cellular claws,
tore his heart apart
and life dripped away,
as one son watched
and the other walked
in honeyed groves
not knowing he had gone,
on this day.

And in the foothills
where I grew
on this day
when you were born,
as limestone quarries
that she had fought
began to belch their fumes,
and the broken hills
which she had greened with love
caught the first Himalayan light,
some heartless stranger
cruel strangler
snuffed out her life,
just like that,
on this day