Tribute to Mother

Let me hear your song again mother;
That song ridden with pain and agony
Which you have often sung to me,
For in hearing it I can feel the pain

Through which you have been all your life.
You think I will not understand it, perhaps,
For I have never experienced the same
But I promise I’ll listen to you with all my heart.

Mine are the same brown eyes, mother,
Wrapped in wrinkled eyelids. The same tears
Flow through them, those useless salted pearls:
Once a symbol of womanly weakness.

All you wanted was a bit of love, right?
A tender loving hand that would support you
In distress and pamper you with caress
And make you forget the world…?

But violent hands had bent you in force, they broke you almost!
I can see now how your mother (her tale another paean of pain)
Had thought you no less than a burden, only meant to wash
Clothes, cook food, be shut indoors and lay rotting thus for life.

You thought marriage would be a means to escape
From that house which overwhelmed you
With memories of a bitter childhood but
You only found yourself landing into further trouble…

For you became somebody else’s burden now
And your life became a monotone of melancholy,
Hummed in lonely corners of the one-room
Apartment where you spent eighteen years of life.

From that corner of your heart where motherhood
Lay rooted and from those cracks that were formed
Due to suppressed desire burst a fount of fury; you
Rebelled in silence, nourishing your womb with dreams…

And your sole aim in life became the education
Of your daughters and making them capable enough
So that they may lead a life of freedom and dignity.
Now, after twenty years of nurturing, I stand before you,

A different individual but your own reflection, all the same
With the same brown eyes, wrapped in wrinkled eyelids.
The same tears flow through them, those useless salted
Pearls. But today your daughter proudly bears testimony

To that legacy of patient suffering which you have bequeathed her.
I shall sing this song for the whole world to hear, mother.
But I wonder if I shall ever be able to sacrifice as did you
Or carry forward this legacy, this pillar of womanly strength…