The Maiden

The Maiden (A poem)

Leo Kee Chye

There stood among the crowd
Was an old lady.
She was old and weary.
But mysterious reason had
My eyes casted at her only.

Her old clothes told a story,
A plain and worn-out story;
Her wrinked face, a history;
A tired and painful history;
Her greyish-white hair, a mystery,
A long and sad mystery.

But yet she dignifiedly stood
In the crowd she was in
And she walked. Yes, she walked
In a stoical stride,
Unsurpassed by any in the crowd.

There stood among the crowd
was the old lady holding
To the hands of a teenage child.
With protruded lips and flattened face,
the child looked dreamingly, blissfully
Ignorant of what was the goings-on,
Knowing not of things but of only hunger and cold,
And lest his mother’s gone.

Yet the old lady held his hands
As if it was her most precious gems.
With such tender eyes she looked at him,
Likened to a mother at her baby born newly.

There I looked at the old lady anew,
A full transformation to my view.
She looked not an old lady
But a maiden of great beauty.
Her hair’s not greyish-white
But of lustrous bright.
Her heart blazed an unbinding love
That would melt the heaviest shackles on mother earth.

There I could see her walk, with such breezy steps
Holding her lovely child proudly on her breasts.

I followed her along in somewhat shame,
Knowing that I wept
Under the slightest strain,
Giving up trying
having failed my first attempt.

There as I watched,
She disappeared into the crowd.
Not an old lady I told myself
But a beautiful maiden in her true self.

This poem was inspired by an old lady and her mentally challenged son I met while I was on my way home.

Leo Kee Chye

Sunday, August 3, 2003