Thou dost the air of December, O Babasaheb, Tremble with thy memory.
Out of each city, each village, each slum and dumb avenue,
like waves upon Chaitya Bhoomi stand millions—
Their tracks are supplications, their tears, the blood of thanks.

They are not shadows, but the morn you made of them.
They are the carriers of the injuries of the past.
With your breath, their backs straightened.
Their broken voices thunder now thy name.

O Ambedkar—fire of the forsaken,
you were born in a darkness of dead, loveless, lightless years.
But your pen, dipped in agony, wrote again the destiny of the condemned.
You made of our scars scripture,
and silence in us to the constitution of a new humanity.

Our mothers put their laughter in a casket before you,
Our fathers were dragging branches of thorn behind.
To forget the sin of their footstep on holy ground.
They had pots about to gather their spit—
But those pots with the hammer of truth you smashed.
You had us understand that we were not pollution,
but the beating of the very earth.

O Babasaheb, the twice-born temples would not receive us,
But your head made a temple of learning, Wall-less.
You set lamps in Columbia and London,
and with their fire, burned you the broom and chain.
You have taught us that wisdom is the revolution most of all,
and that there can be no scripture sacred which makes suffering holy.

They said that you were a rebel, a heretic, that you destroyed faith—
But you, O Ambedkar, were the lord of justice.
We gasped when we were clamouring after dignity.
You put the democracy into our lungs.
When we were dead to the world,
You brought us to life through teaching and precept.

Even to-day the Sanatan shadows do haunt—
They mumble caste in our schools;
They cut stratification into our skins.
But your light refuses to dim,
Through all your signs of resistance, your words resound.
All dreams which start with "I am human."

O Babasaheb, you did not end with your death.
But a morning of grieving,
I am writing, on this sixth of December,
is not sorrow, but is memory in fire.
We stride, the former Unseeable, Unshadowable, Unapproachable,
But now, we are galaxies going through the open sky.

You put breath of life into us, and we speak thy word:
There is no man that should not be touched; no soul that should not be impure.
Thou art our freedom, like thy name, O Ambedkar.
Your dream, our immortal morning.