Juxtaposed Poem by Satish Verma

Give me a piece of your body
before you go.
A tooth, a nail, a curled hair.
A relic, my sadness wants to keep.

By your absence I will live
in the bones of tangled bodies,
who were shot down on their tracks
under the sun, eyes apart.

The trembling does not stop.
Bread loaves were lying uneaten.
Wailing rises, reaching a crescendo.
Blood splattered soil, my hands collect

for god, to show a dirty game,
when I meet him as a witness.
Wanting to know, why not the right to live
was the most sacred thing?