The trunk of the jhand tree
is too wide for the ceremonial
string, its base covered

with offerings wrapped
in newspapers, swirling round
the fields, in the graves of

ancient farmers. Bundled in red
silk wraps, the newly wed bride
bows her knee in the makeshift

shrine. She shines a light
from her clay lamp, to watch
for the blessing from her jathera –

an inscribed picture of generations
of wild freedom where in a distant past
his body was made of better

materials, back then there
were more brides who visited –
she thought she heard her forefather

in the tiny shrine. He warned her
that the next people, their descendants,
would be living in a discotheque,

banging on instruments resembling
lutes and drums, getting themselves
drunk as they pledged brotherhood

from a single cup.  His obligatory haunting,
the antithesis of the wandering
cattle doing no work on that day.