TRIBAL WOMAN

Tribal Woman
A dark, snivelling shape
primordial ,impish , a demographical
number in government's statistical register
melt into soggy contours,a shape without symmetry
splashing bony cheeks, fused eye balls in dark cavern.
Do they tell her days soaked in her wrinkled skin?
lurched like a starved lizard towards the hills.
She gleans through moth-eaten,dried leaves,ferns and figs,
the life-less berries to feed her rickety child
waiting for food , glued to the distant rocks.
The puny little shape(s) ,pest -stricken seeds;rusty,husky
outside the pale of refrigerated civilization gasping in their dark dens
mock at the democratic propaganda ;equality,fraternity and liberty.
In her sunken eyes , I see the hollowness of women's empowerment
and two august houses of the Parliament hung from her sagging breasts.
Academia,seminars,government's progressive plans
all seemed to be melting into a river of illusion
flooded with dry sands, soals, fossilised ferns and figs.