Great gales of corrosive vengeance

Buffet city and town, street

And public square, dressed and amplified

By the canny technologies and the wicked

Wealth that drives them.

Creatures crawl from under gutter stones

And tiled obscenities to yell a field

Day of  sub-terranean stings, leaving

Breathless those that yet walk upright

On honest legs. Caring thoughts, wherever

Expressed suffer depletion from hedged

Cautions,

An occasional Lear rages upon

A distant heath, hurling ineffectual

Curses at the elements, bemoaning why

A Cordelia should have no breath at all.

And many a Macduff look askance

At the heavens who do not take

The part of murdered innocence.

A Hamlet here and there puts it all

Down to Providence, even as they wish

To have their cause recorded for

Some emancipated posterity.

 

Among the gales, there is no breeze

That may betoken a resurrection.

Not a streak of blue decorates the skies.

 

Everywhere, claims of ancient wisdoms

Are laced liberally with arbitrary shovels

Of blood, as men and women are marked

For reckoning with color combinations.

 

Masses of the powerless flock to hear

Some Antony or another, hoping that

The buttons they press will yield

The results they desire. Long lines

Of the wretched keep their faith, even

As the programmed jinns laugh

Cruelly at their tryst with democracy.

 

Many turn to the gods for reparation,

Not knowing that gods these days

Dress their favors to a corporate fashion.

 

India that is Bharat faces yet again

A samudra manthan, but what throat

May this once collar the venom?

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