DRUMMING

in hired spring and naked thighs

the eternal sorrow did not go, it was living in our
memory under the gun of an unknown soldier. The
mania

had brought the overwhelming jeopardy of artificial
smiles, the swords, and ropes and different

tools of torture brew abomination, my clay
absorbs the shock, the abandonement of pain;

I reach for the icicles of veiled fire to burn
the generosity, the sacrificial amputation

of one’s own neck in service of opposition

Satish Verma