Goodbye!

‘Wake up, baby, wake up.’
Cradling his infant twins
sobbing Al-youssef uttered,
choking back his tears. 

Toxic gas: the silent killer,
had snuffed out their life.
The grieving father realised
bodies in his arms were dead. 

At their final resting place,
in a heart-wrenching voice
he mumbled: ‘Say goodbye,
baby, say goodbye.’

Goodbye? Was it to a father
they hardly came to know
or to a world they got no chance
to live in, before they were killed?

Ajit Kumar Das

[The aforementioned poem was written in the context of the recent chemical attack in Syria.]