All healing will, at the end, come from words.
Some saints descend from air, some from words.

Between your sin and mine runs one endless line
However much you scrape the scum from words.

For the mind’s freedom was Paradise lost
Our Gods all extracts of the sum from words.

Under looming banners of right and wrong
Your pedants keep beating their drum from words.

You raise whole cities on the bones of greed
Your prophets languish in their slum from words.

Beware that the blood of words can rebel
Unshackle Bastilles by the hum from words.

…

Basudhara Roy teaches English at Karim City College affiliated to Kolhan University, Chaibasa. Drawn to themes of gender and ecology, her five published books include a monograph and three poetry collections, the latest being Inhabiting. She loves, rebels, writes and reviews from Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India.