Panacea
A folk of panaceas
bend, bond, draw patterns in sky.
Pigeons?
You say. It may not be
my reality.
I wake up late.
Rise even later.
Have you heard the latest
of Mrs. Ray?
A folk of words crisscross
my mind, but they have
no place to sit
or nothing to eat.
--Tod Seelie
A folk of panaceas
bend, bond, draw patterns in sky.
Pigeons?
You say. It may not be
my reality.
I wake up late.
Rise even later.
Have you heard the latest
of Mrs. Ray?
A folk of words crisscross
my mind, but they have
no place to sit
or nothing to eat.
--Tod Seelie
Arundhati Roy achieved international acclaim in 1997 with the publication of "The God of Small Things," becoming the 1st Indian woman, and the 1st Indian who actually lived in India, to win the Booker Prize. "The Ministry of the Utmost Happiness," Her next novel, published 2 decades later, opens thus:
ReplyDeleteAt magic hour, when the sun is gone but the light has not, armies of flying foxes unhinge themselves from the Banyan trees in the old graveyard and drift across the city like smoke. When the bats leave, the crows come home. Not all the din of their homecoming fills the silence left by the sparrows that have gone missing, and the old white-backed vultures, custodians of the dead for more than a hundred million years, that have been wiped out. The vultures died of diclofenac poisoning. Diclofenac, cow aspirin, given to cattle as a muscle relaxant, to ease pain and increase the production of milk, works — worked — like nerve gas on white-backed vultures. Each chemically relaxed milk-producing cow or buffalo that died became poisoned vulture bait. As cattle turned into better dairy machines, as the city ate more ice cream, butterscotch-crunch, nutty-buddy and chocolate-chip, as it drank more mango milkshake, vultures’ necks began to droop as though they were tired and simply couldn’t stay awake. Silver beards of saliva dripped from their beaks, and one by one they tumbled off their branches, dead.
Eerie. One senses the impending impassioned future
ReplyDeleteYep
ReplyDelete