A new bride has come, the palanquin has left.
Those who’ve come late — the old viewers: grim.
Brittle-finger mothers measure the skin
of the girl. Her ornaments’ weight. Hair. Teeth.
The onlookers grow. This new girl’s laugh —
Tell me, tell me, ma, will she be tame?
Will she not blind our boy (for how long they themselves
could)? But a new girl shall possess new new tricks!
Carrying paddy from the paddy fields to the paddy pots,
pots to the oven. Oven to the mill.
The animals of the flower-bed night bathe
the cattle, feed the cattle, smell of cow urine.
Love. Who calls its obtuse name? The clarinet calls.
At the midnight play, Majnun bawls. The girl, too, weeps with him.
Till her man appears. To bring her — to bed.
Till the birds cackle, the sun appears. The girl wakes up to sweep
the floor for another ten years.
Now when the cowshed is clean, her daughter goes there to read.
(The poem was first published in the May 2023 issue of Poetry India: https://www.ethosliterary.org/poetry-india/may-2023-issue/poems-by-arun-paria
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