by Saikat Das
When we passed the Dutch cemetery
We saw him sitting
Under the Gulmohar tree
I thought he counted
The butterflies;
There was a small garden
Behind it the graveyard;
Sometimes he sat by them
Giving the lonely white souls
His company
They left him there
To tend their dead
He was not white enough
To go with them
And we watched him
Only from behind the walls
When we drove past
The crumbling walls of the cemetery
To our school
My brother thought
He was the Selfish Giant
I called him Edwin
God knows why
But he liked the birds and
I knew
He would play with us
If we got in
But we never entered the garden
Like all else
And there he sat
Talking to the birds,
Picking flowers for the dead
And removing weeds
From the graves
When the sparkling sun
Broke through the Gulmohar
After the rain
He kept looking at it strangely
He did not ask for anything
He knew
He was not supposed to
When I saw him badly cough
I wanted to go and sit
By his side
His sweaters were worn and old
Like him
He never used a muffler
The whites are whites
Even in their graves:
The dead never rose to bury him
Only the butterflies mourned,
The birds poured in their songs
And the rain came
Then the weeds buried him
Under the tree
A little away
From the graves.
