I asked a Dalit man if he liked his job.

Upon Asking a Man If He Liked His Job

 
I ask a man if he likes his job
As it’s a dreadful industry, death
Stacking sticks of wood, then shoveling
Their white remains into the depths
 
His torso is varnished in the sun
Its glow and he work side by side
Kissing sweaty on the quarried blocks
Slick and final and steep
 
To the river where the dead
Are wrapped and left for ash
Where holy grounds meet flow
In layers of trash and weed
 
Spent wreaths and ribbons cast
On stone cut rough and polished underfoot
Textiles, awash in waves and wind
Tossed in the sorrow of piles
 
His white rough cotton wrap turned grey
Is soaked in perspiration and fume
The burn and wind enwrap his body
Against a sky that scorches flesh
 
His squint dark eyes accepting time
At the holiest of spots in heat
The incendiary force of which by choice
They are brought in wraps of orange
 
When the wind is wrong, the air
In its ironic humid smoke
Wafts up the steps like barbeque
Still months later in the throat
 
You could call it camaraderie
Beside him in humanity
If my ticket hadn’t cost more than
He makes in a year
 
At the lowest of the castes
He rides these steps of fate
I ask him if he likes his job
And his response lights a flame

His father, and his father, and so on
Six generations to his knowledge
Counting firewood by body weight
Stacking, lifting, shoveling
 
God wants me to do this
He says, through a smile of teeth
Stoic and willing, unencumbered
By the larger question

But by a man lying nearby surrounded
With fresh leaves, an incense cake
At his head, his wife leaning
Over his purple sunken eyes
 
My fellow gazes on the dead man too
Imperceptibly nodding, sizing him up
Slow, like a heartbeat, counting
His weight in sticks and blaze