To Be Or Not To Be? Poem by Rajendran Muthiah

They ascended the steep staircase up
the lighthouse unrenovated for long.
As she had the niggling fear
of his promise of marrying her,
' I thought of you more than of a lover.
I offered my heart, my self and all.
Soon, our baby will show me to the world,
though I keep our affair within the pages of my mind.
Couldn't you marry me in a month's time? ',
her voice cracked with emotions.
He was nattering about the problems of caste as usual.
'To be or not to be? ', she wept aloud.
' Be calm. Understand my position', he caressed her cheek.
He was assured of more dowry from a rich girl of his kin.
So he was plum but the poor girl of the city was glum.
' Life after death will be sweet', she uttered,
cringed at his sight and jumped over the parapet wall
and fell down flat into a bloodied body.

The boy climbed down with a ghastly shock,
looked at the crashed head and vanished into the crowd.
The girl didn't think to take the boy to the police
as the modern girls do to shock the boys.
And he was not even haunted by her ghost.
The light house is no more, being demolished in 1980.
He shifted to a new house and brought his rich wife there.
She had miscarriage before the first delivery
and thereafter never carried till her death two years back.
I met the man in tears drenching his beard, recently.
Tears of blood shed by that chaste, poor girl
had torn his heart to pieces and he was speechless.
That heart rending spectacle is running alive in his mind.
Death will not come to him in haste
as he has to shed tears of blood from his worst heart.
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