NIGHT AIR
The cool night air with drops of rain
Revives many stories of pain :
Of a father’s worries about leaking roof;
Of neighbor’s son turning alchoholic;
Of my kin’s daughter drinking phenyle
At the news of poor board result;
Of unmarried aged daughters
Victimized at the dance bar
While serving liquor to hi-fi builders;
Of acres of fallow land
Lying open to a sterile sun
Without hope of regeneration
As one-rupee rice replaces labor;
Walls of my house in native village
Falling to pieces
like slabs from temple tops;
And an entire country
Plagued by insurgency within
With deaths of innocent citizens
Caused by some wild men and women.