Joy Goswami

10 November 1954 - / Kolkata / India

There's a bridge on the road - no water - just sand

There's a bridge on the road - no water - just sand
There's dust on the road and a giant weed-choked well

A crematorium? That too -
Those lying shrouded on the biers
Have left for work in the outskirts, pushing their cannon-carts

Was that a sudden breeze? An exhalation of packed-in straw?

I lean into the bomb craters, the graves and see
Babies, their mothers' hands clamped across their orphan mouths.
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