Colour Me Black Poem by DR KUSUMITA MUKHERJEE

Black
Colour of Night, Evil and something as petty as nigella seeds.

You are hideous
Yet it is to you I turn Black

Dark, be my light
Hurl me down in my own esteem
Belittle me

For I have wronged
I have judged the skin not the heart

How did I forget that you are the one with which I deck my vanity?
Are you not famed to ward off the evil eye?
Krishna the handsome God is a favourite among women by dint of his dark hue.
The vociferous Goddess Kali is but your fiercest embodiment.
What a dunce I must have been to disdain the favourite of the Gods?

Had he but chosen that moment to chastise my indecency?
I would not have been breathing to synchronize these lines.

The black that I jeered
Was the one that risked his own life for my sake.

I am drained
I cannot bear to acknowledge- - proud as I am to be fair- -
It was he, as dark as the Shiva lingam
Who leaped; the Panther
To drag me aside from the clutches of death.