ANCIENT SINS

Drunk with pride
the streets are bursting
in self-indulgence.
Who was calling the shots?

Do you know the words
between intermissions, carry a secret-
till the brazen scoop
finds the hidden meaning.

It was grave
very grave truice, unmaking love
between the estranged lovers-
when clouds were seducing the moon.

You don't belong to this
crowd of renegades. Ants
will take away the
divorced dreams.

•

Fissile belly
has started showing signs
of reckoning. A gloom has settled,
gyrating in a sunken garden
for the hung corpses.

Never cruel were the times before
when blind needles were unstitching
the lips of frozen faces. I refuse
to start a prayer
till the grass covers a silent tomb.

Last night it had rained
on the private flesh. It was
full of semen. You do not
belong to this world
of pregnant pause.

Satish Verma