Cycle of Hatred

The only way to overcome the little indignities of life

Is to rise above them by forgiving - Johann Christoph Arnold.

===Part One===

Its chain orbits like a berserk ball on the pitch

Revolting and encircling everyone at its reach

Not one of us is spared of its hurt

And this we sadly share: a painful scar from its cut.

In all eons is it found,

The cycle of hatred

Consuming inert and vindictive minds as it goes round

Quashing peace into pieces in lives thwarted and with hopes condemned for debacle.

Its fruits are bewilderment and chaos

The cycle of hatred;

With taste as vinegary as molting tears of shame.

===Part Two===

I did hear of a time when love was blind

When we could care less of the envy in people’s minds

And here we are in the course of fate

Exhaling filth, enduring severe gestures of reprisal with clemency lying in state.

In seasons and days not long ago

Love was in the air and everywhere; living was a splendor in its whole

And neither was compassion to anyone a stranger

Nor could one bear to live through a day with vitriol at heart.

Everyone was his or her brothers’ keeper

Exchanging with ease smiles and care, lest we all falter

Alas, even a nursling knows the world is aggrieved and blue

Full of tired toes and worn spirits multiplying as each day begins anew.

Those we had seen as neighbors and some we deemed to call a friend

Have transmogrified into coldblooded persecutors we so abhor and utterly dread

And as the Milky Way twists and turn

We have lost such sensation as that of sheer glee and wholesome fun.

Such a time has come for us to make that conscious call

To converge in solidarity lest we all fall.

When an injury is done to us

Prior to reacting, forgive and ignore not the suppliant rhythm of your heart’s pulse.

‘Violence multiplies violence

Toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction

And returning hate for hate multiplies hate

Adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.’

For how long must one dwell in despair?

Harvesting crops of consternation while living in fear

‘How can I love those who insidiously seek to defeat me?’

This you would ask but having given a tooth for a tooth, what do you really see?

It only makes more victims-

The cycle of hatred

And ‘although it is extremely difficult to forgive,

Never let hatred completely overtake you.’

In the end, we won’t have to answer for what others do to us – only for what we do to them.