Survival

An enclosed alcove, a vaulted tomb,
Our imprisoned asylum under the earth.
While over our heads bullets rang,
Our Sun was but a square patch atop the wall.

Inside our confining sepulcher,
Reeking of every foul and putrid odour,
We waited, hoping and praying,
Praying for a release from this implacable torture.

Some even took to ingratiating themselves
With those heinous soldiers in uniform,
Those brutal monsters who came once in a day,
To keep a count of the dead and the alive.

Many a time silence was all I could hear,
I try to remember vainly what the colour of my eyes was,
Now the smell of wet mud after the first showers,
Is but a distant recollection, an obscure dream.
And sometimes, not even that.

People I know and people I did not know,
Gave up hope and died, while I kept breathing.
Days, weeks, months, years??? I do not know.
The rest of us kept waiting,
While the war overhead raged on and on relentlessly.

One day, someday, many full-moons later, I assume,
We were pulled out, along with the rotting carcasses,
The light blinded me, and I staggered, disoriented.
Then I stood up on my legs, and remember hearing a shot,
And then there was nothing. Black. Void. Non-being. Extinct.