Raghav Srivastava
Animals, far removed
From the places and times
To which they belonged,
With which they once spoke
With a language as old
As love and earth
Like all marriages, grew into something
It was not
The land and its people, rift
They do not know as they once did
Of their belonging
They now speak fear
From the gnawing muteness
Of their sorrows
Of the abandoning
That left
Of lost wisdom
They did not know was theirs
Until it was not
Of lost selves,
Blind with tears
which could no longer see
And then turned away
To seek the familiar salt
Of spent anguish
Caked upon the skins of souls
Trudging the same deserts
In perfect pace with them.