To a Three Days Old Child
Little child
Little you know,
That the air you breathe
Is but sighs of thousands.
Shut your eyes tight now,
And don’t yet be fated to see
What we all are fated to be.
But it won’t last long:
You’ll soon see mama’s smile
And her love-wetted eyes.
Then soon you’ll learn to see
The feeble fear in her eyes.
Soon enough, baby will know
What getting scolded is,
And she will wail aloud
In an empty room.
Then our cleaver girl goes to school,
With a big satchel and a running nose,
And she’ll learn to hate
Some jade face iron heart Miss Mem.
And as the sun and the moon
Are busy in the sky;
We’ll find baby is in love
And she’ll be baby no more.
Mama will love her more than she needs
And mama will expect more than she heeds.
And she learns that mama can be harsh.
But baby wont cry now:
Instead, she’d learned
To smile with a sigh.
Then a day comes when
Someone breaks baby’s heart,
And she wont smileAnd she wont sigh.
She gazes at the moonAnd sees a crack in it.
One sunny afternoon,Back from the college,
baby findsSome loved one had died somehow
And baby recalls
The old art of wailing aloud.
As the stream of timeTwists and turns and bends
Around one bent we’ll see
Our baby’s smile
And her love-wetted eyes
Yes, our baby have got
A baby, to cry for
To fight for
To live for
Then her every breath will say a prayer
As mine does now for her:
May it all be different for you.
(c) Korou Kh, 21st dec 2002
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This poem was written exactly six years from now. it was published in my school mag and I had a copy of it. Thats y it survived for so long and past the major-poetry-notebook-burning-incident. Yaa I burnt my notebook containing all my poems some 5 years back. Kinda impulsive. Not that I regret it dat much.... but i wud love to go through it once now.
and yaa ... d BABY is 6 yrs 3 days old now !!!!
I think I ll put up a pic of her .. c s my cousin sis .. i adore her gr8ly... and even now wen I was typing the poem .. I cudnt help wishing "May it all be different for you."
