The Sunday Poem: The Jungle Book part II

I know, I’ve been posting these in no particular order. They all stand alone anyhow. You can read part IV and part VI here.

II.
The Village

A small village sits like a patch of sanity
In the center of a wilderness fenced out
But it dreams of singeing the tiger’s whiskers

The thick jungle sweeps to the grazing-grounds
And stops there cut off by a hoe
Kept from the little gullies and scrabbly grass

Herds disappear into the wrinkled ravines
To wallow in mud pools in the scrub
Where they can dip their mighty heads into the mud

Eyes begin to close as the sun beats India
And the only sounds are the cries of the kites
And the constant zuuummm of the flies

The big blue buffalo spray mud and water
Gazing around with heavy brown eyes
As it drips down cavernous nostrils

Mud cakes on the nilghai and cracks
Into river deltas on their backs
They dream of singeing the tiger’s whiskers

The land is a blanket of rocky ground cover
Draped on boulders bumpy and misshapen
The soil has melted onto the bones of the earth

The cows and you yourself walk on it like flies
No tail comes from heaven to swat you
And as the buffalo break free of mud the crack!

It must be like gunshots on a gray evening
Red-gold flowers bursting from every branch
Tonight the souls of tigers are dead
And the whiskers are ashes kept in lacquered boxes.