The Match
The early dusk sky was still ablaze
with the glowing embers of the dying day.
I saw you hunched over the burning funeral ghats,
inhaling the smoky perfume of charred flesh and bone
like a macabre dope fiend, then go drunkenly staggering
through the sewer-lined streets of the night-time town,
brazenly juggling flaming batons of birth and death
like some crazy carnival clown on a grisly spree.
Look, in the temples and shrine rooms your devotees
are offering gilded gifts at the makeshift altars of their
superstitious fantasies, but I can see you, Devi, and I
know that you’re only doing your job, so no praise
or blame will escape my lips, just get on with it:
this world is dry tinder, you wield the match.
Bob O’Hearn