ACROSS THE OCEANS (ISSUE 7)
SEASON OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN
by Arathy Asok
Women are all beautiful this season
They have scrubbed their faces with white marble
And kissed deep on blood red wine
Their hair has been taken by the wind floating like water on sky
Their bones, a note of music, flesh lamp in winter.
They are all beautiful
Whom I know not nor who cares to know me
I stand outside the ring, their laughter washing over me
I do not know. I cannot know.
I have lost my innocence when the rose bloomed
I look at them the smile behind hollow eyes
The smell of washed soap and husbands who long after dead fathers
I see them all and know them not
What do they think and how do they think?
Where is life I missed out when they lived this void thinking that they live this truth?
Writing these lines I think of you beautiful women
Who have forgotten to wipe the marble
And the wine before you meets this crowd out here
This crowd who loves you for all the mirth
You ring out and know not that your cries are shut
Behind the vaults that will open only at eternity’s end.
Arathy Asok, born in Kerala, India, completed M.Phil. from the University of Calicut. She currently works as Assistant Professor at Government Victoria College Palakkad and has published her poems in journals and anthologies.
A very good poem Arathy