TOO PROUD

The wail fills the genesis; 
you are not living in me any more. 
Outside a grey mist of absence prevails. 

For a while there was stillness 
of white death, then roaring of a 
hurricane, before it struck the ancient wall 

of a levee. I started gathering my 
sky, in ruins of a screaming town. 
Faith was walking without legs. 

Annihilation with a smile of a calender, starts; 
trees and bone littered floating. 
I start to understand the stalling darkness. 

The human bleed now attracts the wolves 
to maul, to tear, to drown 
the breath of burned out spirit. 

Still a cinder smoulders in debris, 
to dislodge the burden of life, 
for the face lift of a hanging man.

Satish Verma