Is the Lion Still Roaring? by Gangireddy Siva Pranavabharathi (15, India)

When the throne falls to the conquering crown,
Where the greatest of kings, to his knees is brought down,
The war surges forth to desperate rounds,
On familiar but twisted battlegrounds.

We roamed together through heaven, until-
the frontline left a million still.
Cold from a pestilence we couldn’t face,
Abandoned in Thanatos’ embrace.

---

Yet the fighters still man their post.

Far from a man, immortal even,
A plague that is yet to take it’s leave in:
A list of the fallen, continents strong
The reaper’s hand still plucks along.

The beaten lion lays bloody and bruised,
A fallen monarch, broken and abused.
The crown on your head has hit the floor
But the fighting spirit still lingers for more:

A chance for an unwilling host.

The uncrowned king looms at large,
Manning his soldiers, his cannons and barge-
The fighters still stand, afraid but unmoving,
Secure in this greatest of truths they die proving.

The death game plays us without a rest:
Pushing sharpened knives into the lion’s chest-
But the bleeding monarch stands even now,
With bloodied gold fur and bloodied gold brow.

The roar has not been silenced.

Our heroes fall only to bring in more-
When the fallen number a thousand score,
The fight for the throne still rages on
While our rulers’ greatest subjects are gone.

The chariots thunder on soaked earth,
For the soldier fights bravely, at death and at birth.
Not a thought spared for the wrecked battlefield,
The armies still fight on without yield;

While the rolling hearses are valanced.

The pyres are lit, the corpses cast off,
We watch the gates, helpless as the last of -
Our own bid us leave, leaping with the flames,
Their fate sealed as field doctor proclaims -

“There is no saving the flesh of this soul,”
“Charon draws near, demanding his toll.”
We hand them their dues and sew the shroud,
Kin beside us, yet we forsake them, cowed.

It never came, the final closure.

A mountain of casualties eclipses the light,
What else left of those who lost the fight?
But the husk of the form that they once were,
Stolen by the enemy, the wretched cur -

That reaped indiscriminate of even wealth,
Crept and poisoned the body with assassin’s stealth.
Like the graves burst open at the flooded seams,
We pile them in broken, with our broken dreams.

At the horrors of this conjecture.

For a fortnight the fighters linger in hell;
The reaper’s hand closes in desperate compel,
The breath, it evades you, just out of grasp,
No matter the screaming, the dying gasp.

Our blood-drowned armies still rage forth-
In this hopeless fight, for all they’re worth
Their lives stain the fields and stained the sheets;
Yet the warrior’s heart, like the war-drum it beats.

When masked killers pull on new guises.

When the drum falls silent, the roar rings clear,
The point of the sword, the tip of the spear-
Turned heavenward when the chest stops cold,
A crusade recounted once the present grows old.

A lion’s conscience is heavy, then heavier still,
As the dregs run out, all that’s left is the will-
The dying wish of the side that lost,
That was blind to the price yet paid the cost.

When over the trenches our flag rises.