South Asia: Indus Alms of Balance or a Dividing Arms Range?

This is a long poem that I felt inspired to write after watching a documentary on Pakistan’s secret war. There were many faces to this war in Afghanistan.

In the poem I find myself going to the Indus civilisation for answers and I feel similar themes of sophisticated ancient civilisations with advanced technologies based on equality and interestingly the worship of the goddess.

When you look at the current day warfare, poverty and inequality the themes appear the same in contemporary times. It appears across the world great ancient truths have been forgotten. My poem weaves what I feel is a carpet of peace, perhaps a silk road to freedom.

INDUS ALMS OF BALANCE OR A DIVIDING ARMS RANGE?

Indus valley civilization 3300BCE,
Centred on the Indus and Punjab region,
Extending from Balochistan to Punjab,
Industrious hands mastering metallurgy, handicrafts,
dipping copper, bronze, tin, zink and lead,
Trading lapis lazuli, domesticating crops,
animal husbandry and the sacred water buffalo,
As trade joined neighbours as friends,
Spinning silk routes threading Afghanistan, Iran, Turkmenistan,
And Mesopotamia together,
On the magic carpet of interconnecting patterns, customs and exchange,
Bustling bazaars showcase exotic perfumes,
For when sharing and caring,
There is the aroma of peace,
In the high spirits of humanity.

The Indus valley had its highs,
A mountain peak of technology and mysteries,
Brick buildings, inter-linking sewerage and drainage systems,
Sealing egalitarianism as a silent social charter,
An ethos of social leveling without discrimination,
Symbolic codes of phonetic pictorial transmissions,
Engineering precision of hexahedron weights were prized,
Massive city walls arise,
Erected to ward off floods,
A deterrence to military hoards,
A rampart of equality and freedom.

Discovering the god spark,
The shiny diamond of lapis lazuli
Deep blue of the sky and golden streaks,
Is a guide stone of great antiquity,
A touch stone transforming gold into liquid light,
To find the impermanence of yoga is alchemy,
A unified field,
For the people worshipped the mother goddess,
Attaining great fertility,
Bathing in the glory of holy rivers,
Purifying the spirit,
Giving thanks to creation,
For the breath of life itself,
Is of unspeakable value.

Harrappa,
An ancient city extending 13 crosses,
Crosses grew as Aryans conquered,
Marked the beginning of the Indus decline,
As shrinking trade and growing drought,
Deforestation and floods,
Was the blood that flowed,
Changing the natural fork in the river
Rendering it a dry bank,
As the Indus estuary a metamorphic dam,
Damming the civilization to perish,
Marking the arrival of Alexander the Great

What of the descendents today?
Are they ascending?
Or dividing?
Is the estuary reuniting?
Or are dam walls erected?
As hated enemies trade insults,
But no longer trade to share,
Building fortresses of arms,
Rather than alms as the real inner fortress,
Enslaving the peoples in endless cycles of poverty,
Where inequality reins,
Gods are divided and stained,
Slaying the goddess of love to find
no god sanctions war,
For love is the elixir of life that purifies darkness,
To find the light in lapis lazuli still lives,
In those who place value on gods children,
Over books many cannot read.

Partition was the curtain fall,
A wake up call for brothers and sisters,
A British legacy of empire without an umpire,
For this is just not cricket,
As friends become enemies,
And enemies become friends,
Changing sides and faces,
Hands and cases,
As the Khyber Pass becomes unbridgeable,
As neighbours invade,
Religion is the tirade,
Cities are ransacked,
Allegiances are temporary pacts,
To win maximum advantage,
As corruption takes hostage,
Another Indus civilization fades,
from his story.

Gandhi showed humanity another way,
Revenge is an eye for an eye
This makes the whole world blind,
… to justice,
he said – ‘I am prepared to die’
… for freedom,
‘but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill’
… for this was the birth place of nonviolence,
Peace sought to unite both Muslim and Hindu under one god,
To see with the same eyes,
As a child he read from Bible, the Bagavad Gita and Qu’ran,
Joining the left and the right hand of god,
In prayer,
Was to understand and live,
Compassion, charity and honesty,
To know true equality begins at home.

Yet many watch and listen to newscasts that outcast peace and harmony,
In favour of drama, enemies and abuse,
Why do they not veil their ears, eyes and mouths to unveil peace
in fairness not revenge?
To turn their backs on fork tongues,
Throw the shoe at their own untruth,
Returning the convergence of estuaries (many rivers into one)
rather than drying banks of wild rivers,
For usury is the credit that leads to collapse,
As the divided Indus family sinks into demise,
To realize they have forgotten they were once a great civilization,
When they knew the power of all for one,
And one for all.

The ghosts rise out of the Indus valley,
Reminding that equality settles at the lowest point in the valley,
In union with the water buffalo, the eagle, the elephant and the lotus,
For it was civilized to worship the goddess,
Fertility and nurturing is not at war,
Ancient worlds still sing the sutras of peace and devotion for all,
As they foresee the mutiny of the bounty,
As the threads unravel the silk road and the woolen shawl,
Corrupted hearts sells gold for atomic futures,
Fighting bleeds whilst climate goes to extremes,
The Punjab is flooding the food basket,
Afghani refugees are freezing in death camps,
Pakistani’s feel the earth quake after shocks,
Buried under rubble for they are in trouble,
As hope is the real casualty …
buried alive,
Marking this civilizations demise,
For they do not know to go to the mountains,
As they are still in shadow,
For life is hollow when divided and conquered.

The hexahedron and the pentagon,
When true have equal faces,
For the game has been a rubrics cube,
Where logic defies straight lines,
And strategy runs perpendicular,
As east and west meet upside-down,
And right side up,
To never find the pieces fit in the puzzle,
Yet for the puzzle to fit,
Pieces peace together to find the balancing point,
Forming the prism of the polyhedron,
As all points are naturally interconnecting not separate,
Revealing equal faces,
Where the one face of peace is shown by all,
The holy grail is known to all,
Unveiled through truth and reconciliation,
Where Jesus meets Mohammad,
Mohammad meets Vishnu,
And all see the same christ reflection,
For love is the diamond light that faces all in peace,
To find great beauty and riches flickers in the divine spark,
And this is found at the heart of the Hindu Kush,
That is no longer a dividing range,
but within range,
of higher perspectives,
As all stand on the crystal gridlines,
At the centre point of peace,
An electromagnetic matrix weaving,
A geometric polyhedron,
Re-balancing the web of life on earth,
As an indestructible force,
As nonviolence is the force more powerful,
For this was always the course of miracles,
Manifested by our true nature.