A bus driver and a seamstress enter
briskly into a pub and leave with eight
unexplained children of their own, to note
seven of the children were boys, and one,
despite hardships, became Mayor of London,
rivers of blood, no metaphor, were seen
in flight from India to Pakistan,
virtually unthinkable in our time,
except his grandparents witnessed horror,
remember Partition as migration,
a time of bitter animosity,
nothing made sense, get to the other side,
defenseless people murdered by neglect,
as snafus go, this one was all fucked up,
situation normal, anything but,
even the Viceroy rushed Independence
as a way to avoid a civil war,
murder, rape, and bloodshed sewn the book shut,
serving as Governor-general, he
took leave on the solstice of the next year,
reckless in the process of migration,
even he knew tensions would make shambles
serving no one better than death itself,
stick in the mud with Gold Stick-in-Waiting,
enter Radcliffe, the man who drew borders,
no intimate knowledge of India,
trust in ignorance to get the job done,
even if it cost two hundred thousand
residents their lives, we have our countries.
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