Unknown & Unseen Poem by Parvathy Nair

An old stooped figure
Near the garbage bin
A thousand wrinkles,
And a figure so thin,

She stares into empty space,
With dark vacant eyes.
Bundled in a dark corner,
Covered by filth and flies.

Her spirit broken,
By years of pain.
Her visage scarred,
By heat and rain.

The beggar woman,
With a crinkled brow.
All she had with her,
Was her own shadow.

Shunned and alone,
With rags to adorn,
All bones and skin,
She sits alone in the din,
And silently watches all.

The sad and the happy,
The gain and the loss,
In the drama of life,
That flows across.


And when she hears a soft sound,
The fall of a coin into her vessel round
The lined contours melt into an untold grace
in the liquid cesspools of her sunken eyes
and the tears flowing down her face

As night closes in,
Fragile and thin.
She collects her bag,
The sac of rags.
And walks away,
into the darkness unfurled.
And like a mystery She fades,
Into the shadows of the world.

Unknown, unspoken
Unheard, unseen.
And she was on this earth,
As if she had never been.