The Vale's Lament

At Kohala’s bend, where cold waters weep,  
And cliffs cradle the vale in stormless sleep,  
A rider came—not wrapped in grace,  
But armored in wrath, with a fire-scarred face.  

Kakar Khan, of Kabul’s horde,  
Sent to sheath his tyrant’s sword.  
Yet justice burned with a lawless hand,  
And scorched the roots of this trembling land.  

He met a man—barefoot, thin,  
A prayer half-sung on chapped lips, worn to skin.  
No blade he raised, no curse he spat,  
Yet the rider struck, and tore ear from scalp.  

"Take this flesh!"—the warlord roared,  
"Let your blood be memory’s chord.  
Tell your wives, your sons, your kin—  
Justice rides where wheat grows thin." 

That ear, a relic of the maimed,  
Still hums in the valley’s wind, unnamed.  
A soil that begged for sky, for rain,  
Was trampled flat by a stallion’s reign.  

Then came the Sikhs with banners high,  
Their scales weighed gold, their whips drew cries.  
They taxed the dawn, they bound the dusk,  
And sold the moon for cannon rust.  

The shrines grew mute, the fields turned bone,  
While Gurkha boots cracked altar stone.  
No hymn could rise, no child could plead—  
The river choked on spear and greed.  

Then slithered in the Dogra kings,  
Traitors with treaty-inked rings.  
They palmed the vale for British steel,  
And locked its throat in a crown’s repeal.  

No bread was broke without a tax,  
No fire lit without the axe.  
Yet mothers hummed through shackled years—  
"They steal the land, but not our tears."

"O child, when words are bound in sand,  
Breathe their names into your hands.  
You are the seed none could erase—  
A harvest sown in sacred rage."

MyKoul