The Cadavers

Twenty lifeless forms in the hall

Lying on separate tables of steel

Students flocking around each

Armed with gloves, forceps and scalpels

And open dissection textbooks

All braced to dive into human anatomy.

Those men of yesterlife - naked and cold

Oblivious to the smell of formalin

And instruments advancing into them -

Their mundane pride and arrogance melted away,

Devoid of the rich-poor divide, they lie.

The moral ingrained in each one

That, hubris and snobbery

Are all earthly and transient

Meaningful only till death do part

The body and its breath.