Risking His Life

Risking his life, comes he the snake charmer Clad poorly, In a ganjee and a lungi or like that, Half-clothed and half-fed charmer With the snakes into the bamboo baskets Kept one over another, Hanging by the bamboo pole over his shoulders Through ropes at the two ends Containing in With the cobras ever ready to hiss and hood forth Blackly, white and brownish, Caught in the bushes and the anthills, Fields and fallows, The tree stems hollowed and rotten Or the roots holed in The snakes speckled and freckled, Striped, bizarre and grotesque, One which lives into the bushes Shining black and stripes vipers, One which hangs by the trees But the cobras horrifying, Devilish-devilish and demoniac, Ready to attack with the satanic power And hooded up And sway to hearing the finely-tuned Eastern music of India, Swaying and swaying to the wooden been music Haunting them And they dancing to the tune of the charmers, The couth and ill-clad snake charmers, Playing with the cobras Fiddling and caressing them As for a livelihood and the stomach And the music directors using the music But paying to not, Which is whose music?