The Woman On The Pavement 



No one knows where she has come from,
Sitting on the pavement,with grains some,
A bag full of modest belongings,
Two eyes full of longings,
Her hands folded,
Her lips requested
Everyone to buy off her plates something,
Allowing her to earn an honourable living,
To feed herself and satisfy her hunger pangs,
Everyday that spread their venom fangs.


She sits here in the cold alone,
With hardly anything on the cold stone
Of the grey pavement,
Telling a sad cruel story blatant
As she spends here her days,
At nights around her stuff she sleeps like a stray,
Curled and huddled like a bundle
Useless, out in a cold, inhuman jungle
Of heartless human beings,
Who pass by as the season cold, unseeing.


Does not she have a home of her own!
Children,family, people known!
Why is she forced to live here
Out in the cold, in the midst of nowhere,
With no one to care,
No one to speak to her,
She quietly goes about her daily ritual,
Her hardships that seem perpetual,
All questions she replies with a wry smile
And then withdraws into her self imposed exile.


She must be a mother to some children,
Having a few grand children,but all hidden,
I wonder where her husband is?
How can they treat her like this?
She must have given them her entire life,
Must have been a loving mother, a dutiful wife,
But when the time came for them to pay back,
Why did they all draw back?
Leave her weary and lonely,
In the company of hopeless longings, loneliness only.


No one knows where she will go next,
Her future must too be perplexed
At the games her destiny is playing,
About destiny's next move she too must be waiting,
Will this be her permanent home;
Or tomorrow will she be gone
To another cold, stranger place
With stranger faces and a stranger race!
Till then everyday I go out wishing
To see her there,on the pavement, still living!

©Madhumita