A Poet's Hand Poem by SRIRANJI ARATISANKAR

A hullabaloo heard; what is the matter?
Everybody running towards the rive.
A river nothing but a name
Only a dead river-line full of sands
Once flowing flowed gloriously
A dreadful roaring sound heard.
I too ran after the mob.

Everybody standing on the bank
Saw the river flowing brimful
Bur not water, wavy flow of blood.
numerous corpses and skeletons
beheaded bodies, headless demons
bones, entrails, eyes, separated legs,
hands, pulp of fetid flash floating away....

Suddenly I noticed a separated raising hand
floating gripping a verdant branch
of blooming ‘Lodhra-kusuma.'

A grand old man of our neighbourhood told,

‘It must be hand of a poet.
It must be a hand of a poet.'