The Pain Of The Past Pleasure Poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

There was a time when I was proud of my beauty.
Men were around me, young and old, on one pretext
Or the other, surveying me behind and then in front.
They occasioned to touch me, press me and kiss me.
They emboldened to hold me and to grope beneath.
They fed me like doves on grains. I was lavished on.
I had fallen in my fall, yellowing and graying.
Why did I mix carnal pleasure like one does
A cocktail, so soon on the borrowed cushions.
The pleasure reaped in ecstasy turned arsenic
As I recollect. Wine in ten cups is unequal
To a dropp of poison. Let me live no longer
To face the torture of pain from the pleasure
That has been embedded in my bone and vein.
22.11.2002