"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
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Event Type: Education Program