Faith

Being a Hindu, for me
all crows are dead men
flying across centuries
cawing their morbid fears
to those still living.

Decades ago
such a crow
used to visit me
in its black cassock
and sit on flowerless branches
of the Gulmohar trees
near my classrooms.

Many times
it had warned me
against something
while the teachers taught
science lessons
tramping over
the red bricked floors
of the Jesuit school.

At those times
its eyes
were like those
of a martyr’s spectre
watching his own children
desecrate the fatherland
in his own house.

After losing even
the cosmic Brahman
to grave mistakes of acuity
now I learn who that crow was;
but it has become too late
for me to heed the warnings
of the first Father General
and save myself from perdition.