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About This Poem
The Waking up of the Extremis - Act Three
Continuation…
ACT THREE
Scene one
[At the morgue.
[Mortuary attendants pulling bodies while eating burgers.
Atharia, disgusted, wanders off. Sees doctor with
chief mortuary attendant. Overhears their conversation.]
[Mortuary attendant]: dead bodies
all stitched up and powdered well
without suspicion
hope it rains
the smell from the mass graves
is starting to choke
what a shame
a government without
burial grounds
[Doctor]: get vehicle
the organs are ready
for transportation
[mortuary attendant leaves. The doctor notices
Atharia and goes to her.]
[Atharia]: Don’t
you dare
say a word.
Your game is up.
You are but a doctor of corruption.
[Doctor laughs]
[Doctor]: And what exactly am I accused of?
Disposing of dead bodies in a safe environment?
Read the news.
The government knows the cemeteries are full.
Ah! But it isn’t their problem, is it?
Who do you think has to bury their dead in public cemeteries? Not politicians!
Go figure!
‘The dead are conscious of nothing at all’
And yet we cling on to their bodies and shun possibilities.
Speak the word cremation –
And a cold shudder passes over the earth as citizens cringe.
Religious leaders bay for blood and call
for resignations.
Traditionalists call on culture to protest the act.
But whose culture I ask you?
Surely, not of a people who only till recently left their ill relatives
in the forest to die.
Open your eyes
The world is changing.
You can’t hold on to fanciful ideals anymore.
[Atharia]: FANCIFUL IDEALS!!!
How dare you make fun of morality and accuse culture of triviality?
You see the dead and dismiss them as an end.
But what of the living, should they not be appeased?
One cannot claim to respect life and dismiss death in the search
of possibilities.
The cloak of darkness hides your misgivings
but daylight uncovers their wrath.
See there, the woman crying for her only child standing by his grave?
Can you look her in her eye and tell her, her
son’s resting place is now
occupied by another?
Who gives you the right to take that decision away from her?
In the search of ‘possibilities’ doctor,
You cannot ignore the
glare of morality.
And what do you think will happen when she finds out
you mutilated his inward parts?
What will you do then, doctor?
Will you show her the statistics?
[Doctor]: Enough!
You cannot be allowed to disrupt the paradigm.
[Doctor presses hard on Atharia’s neck. Atharia becomes unconscious. Mortuary attendant arrives with vehicle and they put Atharia inside].
To be continued….
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