They manipulated the words
to cross the corridors of essence.
Crib was empty, child was stolen.
At blood stained altar
there was no clue to mystical death.

The contents now matter. Time
displays tools of murder,
snaps the sheet from the bed,
kills the neophyte at water hole,
unsucked breast swells, weeps endlessly.

Apes are coming.
Duplicates look brilliant like novae.
It was becoming crowded. Becoming
was destroying the matter. Fear
moves in water, on the earth.

Faraway a cuckoo sings
a saddest song.
Come, belong to my tears, drops
of my soul’s vessel, kiss the eyes
of planet earth.

Satish Verma