You left behind touchstones
when I was inventing another zero.
Black and white, sobering transparency
was reclaiming the mandate of dust.

Barefoot lambs were clamouring for ethics
in forbidden land. The sun shrinks the
clouds to distribute equally, the landscape in
a vibrant consolidation. The small mouths

start resembling you. Something
unimaginable was happening in a diaspora
of maniacs. Interactive and dauntless,

I put my neck on guillotine, unfevered,
for the beheading of truth, in times
of false hopes and unturned stones.

Satish Verma