The Restless Club-Dancer Poem by Rajendran Muthiah

I saw a comely colleen
walking in and out,
in measured steps and turns,
seeming restless,
but denying her eyes a glance on me.
“Why are you standing here? ”,
my wife queried me and urged to get in.
“Should I get your visa
for loitering on the entrance? ”,
I parried her with a smile.

“Look! She is a club-dancer.
Leaving her illegitimate boy
to live with her parents leaning on her income,
she comes at times to see him”.
My curiosity became boundess.
As the people assign her the mark of shame,
she has restrained her son to play indoors
and to graze in a school far-off.
But the active child steals through the gate often
to join with other children,
who are warned by their muckracking mothers
not to move with this banned breed.
Starving for affection,
he would hang about at the gate
and look at the kids clinging to their parents.

I try my best to stare at her eyes straight,
may be to plumb the depths of sorrow there.
But she yields herself
only to stand with her face down before me
not knowing that my heart gets wet
seeing her pathetic plight.