LAMENTS __ DOOKWON ISWAMAF
Why is this world so heartless?,
Mens so helpless,
Blinds so sightless,
Cripples walkless,
Dums speechless.
And yet echoes no remorse.
The agonies endless,
The people careless,
The poor worthless,
The weak fightless,
I told myself,
Clinging to regrets.
Pounded in tears
As mankind merciless,
The wicked mindless,
Shameless and fearless,
The rich ruthless,
And humans too fairless.
But as for you the poet,
Hopeless in the wounds,
Inchless are my pains,
For the world suffers the most.
Content analysis
The poem is a cry against apathy and injustice. By cataloguing every form of human frailty, the speaker shows not only that suffering is universal but also that society refuses to acknowledge or alleviate it. In the end, the poet—while wounded—feels those personal wounds are trivial compared to the world’s vast, unremitting agony. It is both a lament and a call to moral awareness: if even poets can only lament, what hope is there for real change?.
The theme of universal sufferings vs collective differences:
– The poem’s repeated –less suffixes dramatize how many groups lack the very qualities that sustain life and society: sight, speech, compassion.
– The world’s refusal to feel remorse highlights the gap between human pain and human empathy.
Theme of powerless and social injustice:
– The poor, the weak, the disabled are not only disadvantaged—they are actively dismissed as “worthless” or “fightless.”
– The poem indicts both “the rich ruthless” and “humans too fairless,” suggesting systemic and cultural failures.
Theme of inner despair and the poet role:
– The speaker alternates between rage at “mankind merciless” and personal grief (“pounded in tears”).
– In the final stanza the poet admits personal hopelessness (“inchless are my pains”) but also asserts that the world’s wounds are far greater.
– This creates a tension: poetry as witness, but impotent to heal.
SETTING OF THE POEM
The poem was set at 1:00am, 17th July 2025, in the rainy season.
TONE OF THE POEM
– From accusatory lament (“world so heartless… echoes no remorse”) to self-reflection (“I told myself, Clinging to regrets”) to a broader indictment of society (lines 13–18) and finally to a world-scale compassion (“the world suffers the most”).
LITERARY DEVICES
• Anaphora/Parallelism:
– Successive lines ending in –less reinforce the sense of deficit and deprivation.
• Rhetorical Question:
– “Why is this world so heartless?” opens the poem with doubt and summons the reader’s conscience.
• Alliteration & Assonance:
– “Pounded in tears,” “merciless… mindless,” “shameless and fearless”—these patterns heighten the emotional drive.
