Scavenging Ravens
I am so scared to close my nose,
as I may offend the deplorable souls,
An earthen pot filled with boiling rice,
comfortably sits in the middle of flies,
Everyone's waste is disposed here,
varieties of things in variant grade,
rotten, rotting and sale able plastics,
two human squat there to separate,
what other disposed, have some values,
when ever I walk by the dumpster,
at the sides of these main roads,
I try to walk faster, not to inhale,
the horrible smell of decaying garbage,
the other day I was forced to stop,
the traffic jam created by,
around ten rickshaws and a bullock cart,
I tried to take a deep breath,
and walk past as fast as I could,
Then I saw the bed that was laid,
between the dumpster and the wall,
just on the plank over the clogged ditch,
I was shocked, then I took off my hands,
from the nose and breathed the air,
that these poor people on the street inhale,
day and night and night and day.
How to change this country,
of over multimillion people,
half of them are dirt poor,
one tenth of them are the richest,
forty percent of them middle class,
How to change this country,
to have clean air for people to breathe?
How to change these countries,
to have clean water for people to drink?
How to change these continents,
to have ample work for the human,
to stand on their own feet?
Who is going to do it,
without being the mosquitoes,
that like to suck,
the blood of poor men?
who is going to do it,
without being the Shylock,
who wants not only a pound,
but also the body and the soul,
of the poor men of these continents?
I am scared to close my eyes,
as I may miss seeing all these lies.
poem by Veeraiyah Subbulakshmi
Added by Poetry Lover
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