Urdu

Like poetry in a bookstore's shelf
Urdu's forlorn today shorn of power and pelf

The raging river is now a simpering stream
Evaporating faster than a poor man's dream

Some posey admirers both canine and asinine
Pick and place its words so their verse can shine

In this age of venal jingoistic pride
Given the status of an unwed bride

'I love Urdu' they almost always say
'I want to learn it sometime' when they are going gray

Merrily lapping up those who cheaply dish it out,
Full on make up lashes and Miss India pout

The pusher gets his momentary accolades
Like this she's mauled in many poetry charades

And the ignominy of identity theft
Suffer the sisters Hindi to the right and Urdu to the left

Where's Urdu's new prose, speeches, volumes of thought and imagination
In such a short while such complete subjugation

What was once the language of the native and elite
now homeless in free India's streets

Like all treasures she has been betrayed by its own
India has left her to die all alone

Her children who she educated so well
Have sent their children to english medium with church bell

Left to languish in madarsas and maulvis tuition
For a female she had zero intuition

She did not know even when she was not so young
She would be tied to a religion and properly strung

I know she has no religious bend or line
But like a spirit is both sublime divine

She did not know that she will be cast aside
And now gone the last shred of pride

I know she's welcome on the border's other side but
Does that absolve my linguistic matricide?