Dadhi Ram Panthi
What happens when
The city suffers?
Does it expand vaster than empires
Or stink like rotten salad?
How does the city survive?
Does it survive counting deaths
Or by collecting taxes
From people in gap?
Who pays to the city
In crisis?
Can they pay if savings are off,
Or do they pay if productions are cut?
For whom are the routes seized
And submarines frozen?
Why traveling looks bizarre;
And who is cutting off the wizards?
Why do you pay
To the city?
Is it for your survival,
Or for making its revival?
Does city ever survive in cosmetics?
Where has fashion gone then?
Or if it survives in mobility,
Why are people kept in a den?
Where does the city survive:
Is it on the land or in the sky?
Or does it survive in the air or sea?
If so why aren’t they made free?
Does it look sensible
That the city dies with money?
Or does it fade like the setting sun,
Promising to get reborn with honey?
Can we conclude that city survives in noise
And dies in a bar?
Can we predict that the city cries in pandemics
And rises in war?
[Dadhi Ram Panthi is a college teacher of English, and is based in Kathmandu. Originally from Arghakhanchi district of Nepal, Panthi writes poems in English.]