The Christian Cemetery at Betul
Once it might have been consecrated earth
Now cows and pariah dogs roam over it.
The two hundred years-old boundary wall
Has all but gone, only a portion remains,
Canting at a precarious angle.
The graves are extravagant, surmounted
By huge pedestals; crowned with pyramids
And tents of crumbling, graying masonry.
All this faded funerary splendor
Makes the pathos more poignant
And the dereliction more profound.
Colonel West of the Bengal infantry
Is interred in one such baroque sepulcher,
Captain Nind, aged 34 in another.
There is nothing soldierly about these graves.
They assert quite crudely that the humblest
Soldier in the service of the British Raj
Was the equal of any native grandee.
Across the road a slum has come up
And a girl from the slum plasters the boundary wall
With cow-dung cakes, which she will use as fuel
When dry.
