The radio murders & mutters

names & obsequies in monochrome.

Some grief becomes just a headline.

Read & forgotten. Some home

becomes a brine of dust. A body

of salt, drowning in grief.

In our folklore,

a vulture carried sacrifice

to stem this drought

but on her way to heavens

she was beaten

by rain to her present baldness.

Since then a tomb becomes a home

of wail & the elders bear laceration

of un-storied hardship.

Yet on the radio:

a pastor preachifies baptism

an imam implores ablution

government gullies rainfall

into big-ticket bottles.

Everyone shouts in-dust-ries

but it has been a long time that

sweat turns to sweet songs.

A sibling of drought, stuck

in the billowing dust, cries

to her fairer neighbor:

“aid me in this time of drought

& I remember you during my rain”