Pitha*

He has constructed

yet another

vast forbidding pyre

instillation-style –

residence of the fallen pear

and tenanted

by two ewe carcasses -

who died giving birth,

oh, and the foot-sore cow,

the perennially limping one

who wrenched her hips –

ditto.

Bessie’s flesh-stripped ribs

have been flung

so that now they are hung

like Death’s improvised

spinnaker.

Wool has streamed across

the paddocks

dragged by eager foxes

resembles a kindergartener’s

art: Oceanic Spume.

Careful where you plod

there are gelatinous remnants

and toothily fretted stuff,

oh, there – a shoulder.

What a fine sacrifice,

a brazen burning of brides,

not that they were

what you might call – willing.

Not coerced either, though,

their ash will mingle

with that of the Old

crenellated Monarch.

I will plant

        a new pear

                once the coals have lost their ardor.

        It shall be

a Pitha*.

Pitha:  Sati, Sanskrit Satī (“Virtuous Woman”), in Hinduism, one of the wives of the god Shiva and a daughter of the sage Daksa. Sati married Shiva against her father’s wishes. When her father failed to invite her husband to a great sacrifice, Sati died of mortification and was later reborn as the goddess Parvati. (Some accounts say she threw herself into the sacrificial fire, an act that is sometimes given as justification for suttee, the ritual immolation of a wife on her husband’s funeral pyre.) Shiva, distraught, carried her corpse around the world on his shoulder until the other gods dismembered it to put an end to his mourning. Each of the spots where a piece of Sati’s body fell to the ground became a sacred place of pilgrimage called a pitha.