Poverty | Krushna Chandra Mishra

What a testing tool this poverty is
to keep the chaff out from the grains
to let the foolish world admit
all is not that gold in shining
and silver screens may not
always be behind all dark clouds
and between the moon and the bread
there always hangs hunger
as the poor never afraid of falling
from a cliff where death reigns
if there is the scent of food brewing
and if elsewhere amid junkyards
and in bio-undegradable polypacks
rotting for days and turning poison
food is visible to the eyes of those
starving emaciated shrivelled bodies
in skinned skeletons as they romp
the land not knowing what looks
life-giving is very soon going to
be spinning out death for them.

Poverty equates in hunger and death
telling nothing really matters
in this tyrannical world where
when the people die hypocrites
in slinging mud on every face are heard
when all is set for nothing to be clearly seen
to fix and find and fine the fools
who in cunning hide in havens
of safety that confusion breeds.