(Not quite) religious poetry

But now when I gaze
at the framed postcard
of Ganesh on the wall,
I also picture a rotting carcass
of a beheaded elephant
lying crumpled up
on its side, covered with bird shit
vulture shit -

Oh that elephant
whose head survived
for Ganesh -

He died, of course, but the others
in his herd, the hundreds
in his family must have found him.
They stared at him for hours
with their slow swaying sadness...
How they turned and turned
in a circle, with their trunks
facing outwards and then inwards
towards the headless one.

That is a dance
a group dance
no one talks about.

- Sujata Bhatt, from 'What Happened to the Elephant?'