-wife Is Not A Stone Flower Poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

A husband is, as it should be, the first
Immigrant of his wife’s flesh.
He believes, as it should be, to be the only migrant to her soul.
A prowling lion in him dies as she turns a stone flower.
When he strokes her chin, his mind wanders elsewhere.
When he disturbs her morning sleep it is for his bed-coffee.
He treats her the way a seasoned priest does the idol.
She is not a deer to a lion, to lie as soulless, listless.
Maybe some prowling lion would step in to plunder her.

Ask her why she takes a libertine,
Whether his are palms or claws,
Whether his fingers fork or hoe, how she,
A mouse, bears him, a lion.
To assuage the world and herself that she is
Not a stone flower, she does so.
21.11.2002