My Dark Daughter, My Small Daughter Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

There lies my daughter,
The dark daughter,
Half-fed and half-clothed,
The poor child of poverty,
What it writ in her destiny,
My daughter,
The dark daughter,
Living in a patriarchal society
Of ancestral fathers,
So much neglected, so much ignored
In the country home
Of mud-built houses
Where she is considered but a debt,
A load, a burden,
Sweeping the floor at dawn-break,
Taking food lastly
In the afternoon,
Living on left-overs,
Taking stale food in the morning
And that too not in her lot.