Even past fifty
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Transcript of Even past fifty
By SHANTA SHELKE
She’s past fifty;
Yet she’s still
A little girl at heart,
For whom the house is a doll’s house
And running the household
A childhood game.
She has travelled a long road; but her little feet
Are not yet fatigued.
Catastrophes to her
Are still like the evil spirits
In children’s stories
Whom she fights with blades
of grass; wipes the sweat
From her brow; hits hard;
Sometimes wins, sometimes loses,
Her sword broken.
Difficult questions
She has simplified for herself;
Fitted the tangle
Into a simple frame
On her face
She has made distaste smile
Like moonlight that makes everything smooth.
But sometimes totally in despair,
A flower crumpled in a fist, she
Rises again, smiles, or sings to herself,
Though hers is not a musical voice.
I saw her the other day
After a long time;
She talked
With her usual, irrepressible intensity;
But I, for the first time
Noted the hair fast becoming white,
Noted, for the first time, and with a pang,
The hollowness of the forth
Rising above the stream of her life.