Half light

In the half light
of a personal past
I see her
The crazy woman of the village.
Smiling at us
hurling advice
and crying, complaining
about the mis-treatment
by the master of the house.
A summer-visit by us
from the city
seemed her only sense of joy.
But to us children
she appeared
even more childish.
A mechanized doll
pretty with Jasmine flowers
well dewed
but unable to prune to the deserve.

The lashes every night
that is drunk on people's mistakes
only burnt her skin
into a terrain devoid of feeling.
She would cry out
into an emptiness
which clutches my arm, even now
in a strength and urgency to act.

And out of helplessness
I now daringly presume
that she is finally resting
in some peace of a distant solitude.
And her skin torched by the whip
is alive moving in the underground
forming rivers, mountains and fields.
The geography of suffering and pain.