Prayer or war

Prayer or war

P K Routray

Funny and vicious

greedy and ambitious

are the ways of rich

to amass fortunes and flourish.

Manipulate and marshal

the resources at their disposal,

by looting the wealth under and over the soil

and exploiting poverty with poor’s sweat and toil

to multiply their riches for their own by manifold

at the cost of future and poor with misery untold.

The revelation of statistical facts and figures

shock us portraying the heart sinking and blood boiling pictures.

Consider we two sectors of the world population

one as rich and another as poor for our deliberation.

Forty five percent world’s wealth is controlled by one percent affluent,

eighty percent of the people thrive with world wealth of six percent.

Two centuries back the rich few had three times of wealth compared to the rest

in nineteen sixty it was thirty-five times and in two thousand twelve eighty five times at their behest.

Rich keeps on getting pelf power and luxury

keeping the poor unfed, unclad and under their slavery.

Experts of economics, politics, social justice and from all walks of life

have to rise to the occasion to remove this widening inequality and consequential strife

Embarrassed I am whether to choose a prayer or a war

unless wonder falls on the earth, its doom day is not far.