Taxi Poem by Sadiqullah Khan

I came to know that she was called taxi
A girl
Born to no one
Every fat woman she introduced as her mother
And no one knew who her mother was
And who her father was
But she said
From a village
With some difficult name
From a far off area
In her early youth
Harbored the wish
For education
And a family
Simple clothes
Sharp looks
Intelligent
But she was a poor girl
With her first fat mother
Who was a politician
But in search of a living
Here and there in the streets
She learned and got some education
Some men
And some men of virtue too
She studied literature
After twenty years
Dressed in black
And black glasses
Long nails and a pink bag
Her face gone old too
Her skin has now wrinkles
With blue contact lenses
Always she tried that the people see the blue eyes
From above those dark glasses
No one has seen her face
What’s wrong with that
Not in youth and not now
She is hiding her face
As if she has done
Some eternal wrong
Why was that so
No one knows
Who her love is
And what was that red pink bag
Did she know what that meant?
In a constant flux
And the cheap air in the streets
The whistles from the van drivers
May be she becomes a public figure
Making her way up the ladder
And fighting
When those hounds
Are always after her
A lady that needs no more
The help of Jesus
Or any saint
So many are crushed in this world
And in this society
Who want to be heard
And those who speak
Are given the names like taxi
Who is the saint and who the door keeper
Where are a Jesus and all the prophets
The nobility and the preachers
Some one ask what is
In the heart of that poor lady,
I know there must be
A sea of tears
In those eyes...