Poem: Mohenjo-Daro Revisited
I. You are not dead Why do they call you Mohenjo-daro “Mound-of-the Dead”? You are not dead! You have never been dead Or buried Or cremated By the scorching banks of the Sindhu; Historians have conspired against you A thousand and one tales Have besmirched your name Misguided fools have imagined Your obituary to be true; Sentimental fools have sung elegies By their own graves Garlanded their own biers, Cursed the stars and howled at the heavens Self-piteous tears, in the hope That some part of their practiced grief would be remembered As poetry, A fitting tribute to your eternal face; Maybe, they would be able to, by their ululations, Raise demons from the earth Or bring forth specters From the darkest shadows of the thinnest air, precipitating Some prophecy, nameless and foreboding, a small ...