"Ode to an Adivasi Woman" by Aparna Sanyal, Poet of the Week

Ode to an Adivasi Woman

Aparna Sanyal

Even bare-breasted, 

you carry the dignity of generations

on your collar bones, 

angled in your defiant chin,

proud and unwavering in your 

eyes. 

No small gaze can bind you,

nor encompass your reckless, luscious 

beauty, torn from strife,

born in dust, tears and wattle.

Formed of bracken and thorn, 

dark corners

and stabbing brilliance speckle your soul. 

Made and unmade in many blood-red suns, 

the grit forms your heart, 

the pain stains you dark. 

A white man labels you savage,

for the brown one, you are meat 

of a different kind.

You talk with so much reverence 

to those who abase you, 

even as your pearl-teeth 

smile to bear the pain. 

Carrying your papoose of cares, 

and a male child on your back;

the only sign to mark your eventual passing,

you wend your way, another day

to another field,

another sunrise, another sunset,

where 

passions that are not yours 

and visions that you never sought 

are fulfilled on this bridge

that is 

your shoulders. 

You have scrabbled for a voice

since the beginning of time,

found, then lost it 

in quick gasps 

and sometime-sultry whispers. 

In that voice, you have formed a song, 

from pain and planets 

and the repeated rending 

of yourself. 

But the cacophony cannot hear 

this fledgling song. 

And strained, once more you have returned 

to silence, 

but not defeat. 

Tamped down, but not abated,

you wait to sing another day. 

Your burr and thistle

makes you the dandelion 

that quivers 

and tumbles, 

but will not shed 

it’s precious grain. 

Poet’s Notes:  This is a tribute piece to every “lower-caste” Indian woman bending in the sun, careworn but not defeated by a rigid casteist hierarchy. She bends but is not broken. And every day she fights to live.

Editor’s Note:  While a powerful tribute to the perseverance of lower caste Indians, this poem could serve as an anthem for any oppressed people.