A river

The pain of existence.
A holy man says it with all the seriousness of dawnbreak,
sudden in its gravity,
a comment that shakes the foundations of mundanity induced by routine.

A dip in the holy river,
that moment which would cure a soul of everything,
from past sins to past lives.
One dip.

Then this non-Indian-accented voice tells international television
that the river is the ground for pandemics.
Mystics threaten to drown,
sanitation workers on strike,
so much to care about,
merely administrative issues.

One statement stands out though
the pain of existence,
no one realises the reason
they make this journey
for one potentially fatal dip
in a vat of toxic waste,
but the pain of that existence is nullified
by one holy dip.