Calcutta, seen

Somewhere in a city
Half a goddess unattended sits,
An early coat of crimson drying
Carelessly on Her clay-skin,
While on a wall, unintended,
Shines a sickle of crimson same:
A relic from a time of revolution,
Of ideals, of passions now dimmed.
A living picture of futility;
Of a quaint, anochronistic Beauty.

Somewhere in a city
Stands a grotesque juxtaposition:
A monument of yore,
With triumphant arches
And phallic columns of vanity
Piercing the sky with unabashed gore -
Surrounded by a wretchedness
Of wires and human dregs:
A fallen lion surrounded by a murder of crows.

Of the many wonders unseen,
In a city that lies dead as a corpse
With buzzing bees and maggots unclean,
Only a few have I known.
But every time, in liquid-neon nights,
When I venture out to my Muse:
A host of ugly surprises awaits me
As She reveals Her casual truths.