Seedlings Of Eternity Poem by Jayakrishnan Nair

She sat on a handcart
beside a heap of peanuts,
cracking some with her tender teeth
and relishing them to her delight
while her father pushed the cart
braving the scorching sun,
as if the two had set out for
beyond the brink of the earth.

I saw her pushing the cart
with a heap of peanuts
and her father walked beside
coughing out his life's remains;
she shouted the vend of nuts,
her unripe call resounding in the air
as if praying to the setting sun
not to go into the unknown depth.

Now she sat on a moving cart
pulled by two merry oxen,
her face, a dark shadow
under the crimson veil
that covered her lean face;
they went along the yellow vale
and along the barren fields
as if foretelling what her being is worth.

I saw her pushing the cart again,
with her frail body clad in white,
her little girl-child sat in the sun,
munching the peanuts with all her might.
She shouted the vend, but her call
resounded as a long wail
as if telling the untold tale
of the eternal layers of her life-in-death.