When lamps are lit in oil and flame
They flood our smells in early morning
With God’s jasmines, sweet cardamom,
In offerings of fruit and leaf to gods.
Gods are smiling pictures that smell
Of camphor fragrances, of lamps dying
To be re-born as our next mornings.
Our Gods are kings of bow and arrow
Their wives flanking them in blouses.
When we do not smell our lamps dying
We die like camphor with flames gone.
