Poetry

After lifting the fingerprints of bloodbath
a bushfire starts, engulfing contradictions,
the gulf between erosion of truth and
survivors appears widening. Tiny ants smell

blood, exfoliation begins, from
nameless earth for the exodus of barefoot,
the epic of tragedy, something in the debris is left
for acetic reminder, a death reunion.

The pain starts the saddest saga of human
suffering, a salt lake melting in each eye and then in
every courtroom the defence for the crimes, bail -
out by the buried dark sniffing of fecundity.

The night wraps me, the land of my birth
haunts in its greenness, the wounded sea bids
refugees to hostile shores, a cracked sun
welcomes the lost umbical cords.

* On the plight of SRI LANKAN TAMILS


Satish Verma