The Human Wretch by Pramod Rastogi

The skies have darkened

And lightening has swept

Across the arched dome 

Puffing thunder like a dragon

Running its last league

Before pausing and shining the world

With a blast and its last hurrah.

Life will go on underneath,

Amid the turmoil of despair

Raging in the human heart, 

Where the smile of an angel 

Mingles with the moan of a child 

And where a devil laughs 

With his fangs on fire,

Putting life to unrest and doom,

Forever in a world of daydreamers

Where stark reality enjoins fantasy.

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Pramod Rastogi is an Emeritus Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He is a Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences. He is the 2014 recipient of the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award. He was Editor-in-chief of the international journal Optics and Lasers in Engineering (Elsevier) between 1999 and 2019. He is also a guest Professor at the IIT Gandhinagar, India. His poems have been published in numerous journals.