Sujatha Warrier, INDIA

YOU, THE WOMAN

You bear the womb
that births the world
and the bosom it nestles in,
your strength is deemed
your frailty,
your honour
forever compromised,
burnt ashen
by searing eyes,
stripped to the soul
by leering minds,
torn by hands
of lechery,
gored by everyday greed,
filling you
with a spew
and a stench,
you are alas discarded
mangled, bleeding, but not so dead.
Gathering fragments of dignity
you rise
shattered womb, torn bosom and all
looking the world in the eye
and them the womb stabbers
and the powers that be
the protectors
the preservers
the fathers and the sons.
Ah! Woman, you may yet
hang your head in shame
for the womb you bear
where the world is born
and the bosom that spills
the elixir of life
so, the world will live on.

IMPASSE

I have long followed
you, your dreams
your thoughts
your joys
your sorrow,
your sense and nonsense
your words
and your trailing voice
like it’s been quite
forever.

I rode out with you
your storms
stumbled along on your paths
across terrains
bore the perils
fought the ills
of climbing uphill
and slipping down
now and then
whenever.

The way is cragged
with loose rocks,
the roads often end dead.
Shall we wait
for the fog to pass
to beat a new track
if not for you
be it,
say, for me,
whatever?



ITTICHIRA*
AN UNFADING MEMORY

Bent over with the burden
of a life lived long
her earlobes stretched overlong
like windows to an era bygone,
A few yards of white,
sheer as her naivet├й,
draped around the waist,
a bare torso and a happy face
were all that she would ever adorn
Fair breasts drooping,
wrinkled, yet never bound
by tight seams of propriety,
swaying to the lazy rhythm
of a sluggish, measured gait,
with a quaint charm
and queer patter
as she shuffled past incurious village folk
her womanliness boldly bare
I watched agape
trying hard to look away
blushing, wondering always
at her unabashed audacity.
I travelled miles
by rail, road and on foot
to meet her every year,
and she trudged
crossing generations
of cultural boundaries
and class fences
to meet me every year.
(*Ittichira used to be a common name among the women of the villages in the Malabar region of Kerala)


Sujatha Warrier lives in India and works as writer, editor, researcher and translator. Her poems have been featured by a few online literary societies and journals (Oz Poetic Society, W.I.S.H. Poetry Press, Shot Glass Journal, Muse India, etc.) and included in a few anthologies (Synthesis, Poetic Symphonies, World Anthology of Poems on Global Harmony and Peace, Suvarnarekha, Amaravati Poetic Prism 2017, etc. and most recently, The Current). She has a collection of poems to her credit, The Attic & Other Poems.

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