
(Kamala Das to Judith Wright)
You tell me of a sorrow
That was mine
Yesterday
I brushed my hands
The rough edges of my nails
Had another sorrow and underneath
It was all wet, wet with a sense of despair
Are they all the same the men we loved?
The one who promised and walked away
And the one who married
And the one whose seed I held inside
With such unholy patience and longing
You share with me a joke
That is yours
Today
I laugh with you
It is another tale of a woman
Who like us
Did odd jobs, a house, a husband and a child or two
Or none what difference would it make?
Yet in place and she danced to the tune
Until it soured her bones and soiled her blood.
But she smiled and hugged her tears as if
Nothing at all had happened.
There she was at the bus stop,
At the post office
In bed and the kitchen
Beside the computer and the bath room
Unlike Clytemnestra unlike Draupadi
Unlike Medusa unlike Anusuya
Kicking her angst afraid
It would not just eat her inside out
But follow her like a ghost and then
They would all know
These smells of the sweat
Only dead possess.
Ref -The Sound Of Poetry
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