A Painful Passage Poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

I wept and wept, endlessly wept,
Like of which I have never wept
Save at the time of my mother’s death,
While some sequences I read
Off the book ‘The Blind Assassin’
Of Ms Margaret Atwild, wherein
A little girl, by name, Griffen
Watches speechless the gaze of the mother,
Who is in sick bed, the little sister
Being away at play, quite unaware,
And the mother in her feeble voice
Beseeching her to take care of her sister,
To which she assuredly nods and weeps
At the impending end of her mother,
Without thinking who is there to take
Her own care or that what is in store.

I wept and wept, endlessly wept
As the two little sisters resembled
My two granddaughters, me their mother,
As though their mother is in death bed,
With fear of death looming over my head.

I wept and wept, recurrently wept
When I read, wrote and rewrote
The above passage many a time.
27.03.2001, Pmdi