The Dark Link

The yellow bulldozer,
Broadens the road,
On either side,
The sharp, hefty blade,
Cutting the sods,
And piling them clumsily.

Heaps of small pieces of granite,
Lie on the road-side,
By the pot-holes,
With heaps of tiny pieces of granite,
Which from the tripped-up yellow truck,
Cascade with a scraping sound,
Quite without the perilous beauty,
Of a water-fall.

Wearing caps in the scorching heat,
The municipal road-workers,
Are at work,
Filling the potholes with shovelfuls,
Of stones and spreading them even.

An acrid odour hits my nostrils,
As, on the road-side, a few barrels of tar,
Are boiling over, hot tar trickling down the barrels
And over the burning tyres,
Which had once been used to boil the rebellious blood
To evaporate the unrest in the youth,
By and large, with equal efficacy, perhaps.

Wearing a pair of boots,
Already coated with tar,
A gaunt man pours tar into a metal bucket,
With a tar ladle,
From a barrel with tar flowing like tears,
Or like blood gushing from a wound,
And spreads it even,
Like a shroud over a corpse,
Over the stone-strewn road,
To be flattened by the heavy roller,
Snailing along.

When the coat is thick enough,
They will sprinkle sand over it,
As they do in the wake of a cortege.

But they know as well as I do,
That the potholes will outlast this thin carpet,
And that sufferings outlast
The rebellion.