Elegy on a mattress maker

By trade he was a mattress maker,
Living with parents and two toddlers.
With debris under the rickety shelter,
The toddlers lay motionless covered with flies.
The third did not see the light of the day,
Journey made from mother’s womb
To that of the earth,
Amalgamating from dust to dust,
As his wife eight months pregnant
Died when the house collapsed.

Standing now on the roadside,
People throwing food at him from trucks,
The mattress maker without a mattress!
Brooding over the rigmarole of the politicians,
Remembering armed gangs with choppers,
Cutting the fingers of the dead for a gold ring.

Feeling the tremors and shocks of the quake,
Cries, cracks, quacks fresh in his mind still.