poetry unexpected
Sometime in April this year I came across this delightful poet. His insights are always so startling.
Witness
by Michael Creighton
Like other good men from South Delhi,
her husband drives each month
by the temple, where a few hundred
dusty souls form a ragged line along
the north side of the road. From the seat of his car,
he feeds them – ice cream or pears
in summer, oranges or apples in winter.
Ice cream and fruit are not adequate,
she says. He nods, but never follows,
as she joins the jumbled line,
her neatly pressed salwar
receding to a point of rice paddy green
in the torn and faded crush of cloth.
One soft hand extended with theirs,
she stands and prays in the dry, brown heat.
