Children Poem by PRAFULL SHILEDAR

On the ground in front
A heap of children
They writhe
Like the fish caught in net

Their eyes are searching notoriously
For a man who could lift them up

The moment I look at their faces
I began to see
Everybody's wrinkled face of old age

In front of my eyes move
Sun and rain
That are going to fall over them
And blue black marks of thunderbolt on the body

Children are our own images
Though we are enclosed by the fencing
Of our own limitations
Children try to jump
To the other side of the fencing

There is a sharp brain
Fluttering like birds
Accumulated for generations
In child's head

They bring with them
The miniatures of our organs
With all afflictions

The only thing they don't have
Is a body like ours
Grown as huge as ours
And which is weather heated

In fact the children are shoots
Sprouted from our bones and flesh
Having more fresh color than us

Children twinkle in the sky at night
Like stars
Children are imprinted on a blank page
Like black letters
The dark passages beneath our mind
Descend in theirs as well
Down over the round staircases of genes

Children keep scratching their own silence
Maintaining a balance
They minutely observe tensions between people around them

We go on living without giving much thought to children
We don't even realize the moment
When children have come of age
We don't even know
When we have reached the shore
Out of drift

When we realize
We search
With our own impaired eyesight
Under the shaded eyebrows
The assuring impressions
Of the pink hands of the tender children
Within the wrinkles of our palm

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(Original Marathi poem by Prafull Shiledar,
English translation is by Dr. Santosh Bhoomkar)