Rays of the Setting Sun

    11-Jul-2020
|
K Radhakumar

The three sisters of the lakeside village
By the names of Memchoubi, Mema and Memcha –
They are not bare trees
Standing in a terrible winter.
Remnants of beauty
Shine through the three old women
With wrinkled faces.
They’ve outlived their husbands
By many, many years
And are grey-haired widows
In their eighties –
The eldest of the three in her late eighties
And the youngest in her early eighties.
The children of the three women
Are all grown up
And have children of their own.

They haven’t seen each other
For months on end
And today when they do
The occasion makes their day.
They talk and talk
And laugh away care.
I’ve every reason to feel
They‘ve had good lives.
A cold winter evening
On a stone bench in the lawn
Of an old age home
Looking at the lonely birds
With lovely homing instincts –
That’s my idea of an old man
In this age of self-consciousness.
I’m very much mistaken.
They talk about the old house
Where they grew up together
About the old school
And about Anita, an old friend of theirs.
They talk about the things
That were different
In the good old days.
Do you think
The old feel the cold
More than the young?
It’s getting late
And darkness looms on the horizon.
Talk about it they don’t.
Nor even mention it, for that matter.
Life is remembrance of things past
And it takes years
To accept life in its entirety
And know life’s a great consolation.