By SHANTA SHELKE

She’s past fifty;

Yet she’s still

A little girl at heart,

For whom the house is a doll’s house

And running the household

A childhood game.

She has travelled a long road; but her little feet

Are not yet fatigued.

Catastrophes to her

Are still like the evil spirits

In children’s stories

Whom she fights with blades

of grass; wipes the sweat

From her brow; hits hard;

Sometimes wins, sometimes loses,

Her sword broken.

Difficult questions

She has simplified for herself;

Fitted the tangle

Into a simple frame

On her face

She has made distaste smile

Like moonlight that makes everything smooth.

But sometimes totally in despair,

A flower crumpled in a fist, she

Rises again, smiles, or sings to herself,

Though hers is not a musical voice.

I saw her the other day

After a long time;

She talked

With her usual, irrepressible intensity;

But I, for the first time

Noted the hair fast becoming white,

Noted, for the first time, and with a pang,

The hollowness of the forth

Rising above the stream of her life.