Woman by Varavara Rao

Woman! Your blood
Turns into a child
Your dreams and man’s passions

Woman!
Your blood
Infuses life with milk
Into children reeked with hunger and agony
Woman!
Your blood
Sweats into pearls
in the house in cuisine
In the field in grain

Still
You are a slave in the system
You are the shadow spread silently
Along the wall of male arrogance
Which confines your individuality

Every pleasure in the world needs to be purchased
Only you require and favor with bliss
You offer
Not merely delight but dominance over you
One who plunders you
Either offering jasmine flowers
Or getting a good sari
Is benevolent husband
One who shares with you
Either with a winning smile
Or sweet word is a lover
All that is lost in life is yours
And all the gain goes to the man
It is true you are half the life
In the drama of joy and grief your part is grief

Woman!
You cannot overthrow this system with tears
You must bathe it in bluish flames of fury
You must thunder for your rights
Step in unison with the marching feet
On the path of revolution
From out of the system that looks upon you
As a pleasurable object
Towards a setup which makes you
A force, an individual
And join hands in the pledge of revolution
Without the rise of revolutionary sun
In your heart too, there cannot be a triumph

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