Reader Response--"At Forty You Die" by Yuyutu Sharma

"Yuyutsu RD Sharma. I had the pleasure of meeting him just in time, or something, the other night. In his work, he actively loves the gray between creation and destruction... the inevitable connection between sullied and unsullied Earth. Says I. Ha ha. Anyway. I was sulking and marveling at the same time, because I just don't want to die too soon, and he shared this."

Darlene Costello

"Your poem "At 40 You Die" ... helped me cry right."

Darlene Costello

"At Forty You Die"

Yuyutu Sharma

At forty two moons start throbbing

like bright eyes of your own children.

At forty two people you dream of

most frequently, two people who dreamt

of you and your eyes all their lives.

At forty in the early

dawn of your desperate decades

you start dreaming of your mother first.

She comes limping

like a wounded cockroach

from the other world

to clasp your sweaty palms

to kiss your eyebrows

withering under the blind stare

of a merciless sun,

to complains of the tulips that faded

under the blind stare of a merciless sun.

At forty you dream

of your father frequently,

a Buddha or an exhausted god,

a lion repentant for a lifetime,

a familiar stranger who made you

what you are in your dreams

and left you alone,

bleeding on the mule-paths of life.

At forty you see him everywhere,

in the creases of your skin,

in the puffed-out eyelids,

in the fluffy temples

where two crescent moons appear,

silvery and savage like ensuing life’s itinerary.

At forty he lusts in the crazed

fields of your blood vessels.

He escorts you to

the open spaces of his cherished riverbanks

pavilions of tantric priests

ashrams of ascetics before bonfires of annihilation.

He guides you to the bog lands

of his fond memories where once

his beloved woman lived and

then left him, one by one,

“Forgot the old chums, fell in the trap of new ones”

.

She comes limping

like a wounded cockroach

from the other world

to clasp your sweaty palms

to kiss your eyebrows

withering under the blind stare

of a merciless sun

to complain of the tulips that faded

under the blind stare of a merciless sun.

At forty your own woman's mouth

starts smelling of deceit,

a Bhairab's mask,

a masculine leer along

the canyons of her body.

At forty you start

questioning questions

and decide to die

like one dies in poetry or books.

Or proverbs that proved false--

People above forty should be shot dead.

You resolve what you didn't all life long--

to reach out to touch

the rim of unheard horizons

elusive Shangri-la from where no return

to exquisite valleys of life is possible.

But your children's eyes start

shining like burning stars

along the moons of your secret lusts.

At forty you die to be born again

and again in the theatre of your children's eyes