Poems lay scattered in the city landscape—
lifeless bodies strewn after a blast.
I went picking them one by one—
faceless, headless, decaying trunks.
The ambulance sirens howled on the roads
transporting the dead to the morgue.
The burial was tough—
for want of space, two or, at times, three,
were laid to rest in the earth’s embrace.
I searched for the lost fragments,
the mutilated parts of my poems,to stitch them back in shape—
all sonics, alliterations, and tropes,
oblique, complete, and feminine rhymes were gone—
only an occasional pattern of vowels survived
clutching the depths of consonants—
the lingering syllables wailed like mourning women
and played a requiem of their own.