Broken
A Lamentation of Collective Grief
A mother lies gasping for air to breathe
A doctor holds up her phone to her
A son sings sorrowed a farewell song
The nurses will gather around
A father is rushed to a hospital bed
A daughter will rush back home alarmed
In days the daughter will breath her last
Her father will follow her soon
A family steps out to dine on a whim
In time, they’ll shudder in fever and fear
A child survives, the parents do not
The child will never go home
A doctor wakes up each morning to work
Into the fire each day she will walk
The doctor infected and knowing will die
A new doctor will soon arrive
A teacher steps up for election day work
Into the masses he’ll mingle and mix
The teacher oblivious like lambs to slaughter
Seven hundred teachers will die
A village will bear it’s suffering in silence
No doctors, nor medicines, nor apps can help
Whole families are lost, not one is spared
And we will not know their names
A crematorium lit up by night and by day
As loved ones bear vigil, a caravan of grief
In scorching heat, their pillars will melt
Where will we burn the dead?
Desperate families abandon their dead
To great mother Ganga, the bodies consigned
To wash up downriver, flotilla of death
A country in horror will watch
Hundreds and thousands of sorrows like these
And still too many in the days to come
Every death deepens the wound of our world
A tear in the fabric of dreams
© Unni Nambiar (May 23rd 2021)
