Lineage Poem by Satish Verma

It was set on fire, the market place:
from a distance I was watching, the
hieroglyphic climate of the cutouts;

some shoes with yellow human feet embedded
in them, were thrown on the images
of gods, lying on the steps of tanks:

on hills the sex workers were doing
brisk business in private retreats
of the holiest of towns, a golden dome

was being erected as an insult to poors,
the streaked priests chanting the sacred
hymns, hurling the abuses on red faced

simians waiting on the rooftops,
ashamed to share the inherited lineage
but why one should kill one’s own daughter?