Would you please stitch back my heart too for me, tailor?
It seems to have ripped quite badly.

Will it hold for a few days more?
Will it stay stitched for a few days more?

They say a flood came.
The river has washed away, they say,
The few fields we had.

They say the house succumbed to landslide.
The wife and children stay, they say,
In the cowshed, starving.

They say our son hasn't been able to go to school,
Our daughter has not been married yet.
My old woman keeps hacking, coughing, they say,
She goes on wheezing, being short of breath.

Me, I'm only an old man,
Unable to put together even the rupees to return home.

Would you please stitch back my heart too for me, tailor?
It seems to have ripped quite badly.

7:34 AM 28 May 2000
Putli Sadak