Ma Visits Poem by KATOCH P C K PREM

Ma Visits


Often the woman with a wrinkled face
inside the dark lanes of past
I created
visits and asks many questions.
She is worried why I move about
in the debris of home
I left long back and did not care to repair
and tells me to go ahead
and do not look back.

It assures, for I was the reason
who dared to forget past
and wanted to go
to the other world of light,
hope and applause
and insignia of status.

II

To the wide roads
and the sky touching structures
it was a wish to expand
and write another tale of life
with doors that closed and window
that did not permit air.

It was living of privacy in utter feel
of freedom.

And slowly forgot the white-brown cows,
the wooden pegs and the wide courtyard
of a huge mud house
the little chirping sparrows,
cuckoos and the grey pigeons,
who sang songs of harmony
as the old woman
sprayed many fistful of grains
and put an earthen bowl
full of water that quenched thirst
of long past.

III

She often told me she had a house
of many doors
where windows felt the air and voices
of the birds, animals and of men many,
and did not close and inside the house
you could see the sky
and through the walls and doors
you noticed the world
and probably it was roofless
and I formed images.

I imagine how it filled her eyes
with a supreme bliss
and thought she was a saint
in the house of a sage,
a house that I turned into ruins
and wrote an epitaph
on the hesitant white stone of memories.

I stand up to welcome
and see the eyes, the warm hands
a consoling hug but it is just a feeling a dream
as I find ma walking away with whispering lips.

****