Poetry: Monobina Nath

Monobina Nath

Mary Wollstonecraft 

A girl was born

Like a lemon

Tree on Primrose Street,

North of Spitalfields.

With her blazing eyes,

She fights for the women's rights.

Her life is not that simple one,

Patriarchy always did her shun.

Reason, virtue, knowledge

Already she learnt with courage.

When education and freedom,

Are the words of men's wisdom,

She broke up her feminist voice,

Where women are merely flowery toys.

On great philosophers, she opposed and laughed,

Her name is Mary Wollstonecraft.

***

The New Woman

Good daughters and good wives

The key duties that's women alive

In masculine society,

Where women acts of piety with anxiety.

They cut, they crumble, they die

Under the taboos of an evil eye.

Emotion, beauty, delicate sensibility

All they have, without financial security

As they sacrifice themselves

For 'ourselves'.

From infancy, saw mother with courtesy

To fulfil all her duties.

I too a woman,

Have my sin may be forgiven?

***

An Ignorant Child

You are grown- up,

Changed a lot,

Know to hide your pain

In the democratic world.

Ma, what is society?

It's a small house,

Is a multi- ethnic planet,

Where people lived together.

Ma, but why so many rules?

To protect, to survive,

Both sides, that can’t be

Understood from the common eyes.

Ma, why do I feel so pain,

Even I've done my homework so well.

Why they treated me differently?

Why am I forced to expel?

She gets dewy- eyed, and say,

“Beta... I also felt the same

disappointment, now you feel,

as an ignorant child”.

***

Bio: Monobina Nath is a poetess living in Kolkata, India. Her work has appeared in an anthology “Chrysanthemum”, Eve- poetry magazine, seven poems of collection in ‘Ode to a Poetess’ , Poetry Nation, Hello poetry, Allpoetry, StoryMirror, two poems in ‘Meghalaya Times’ and ‘Indian Periodical’ and got selected in National Bilingual Poetry Competition in 2021.

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Setu, May 2021