Sita in the Modern World

Sita in the Modern World



Many years after, several thousand in fact,

after Ravana was reborn in the hierarchies

of capital and its politics of jealousy,

once more she finds herself isolated by his power.

Knowing Rama to be busy and Lakshmana useless,

she fends off snorts and dismissive shrugs

not by tapping unseen powers

nor by retaliation with an icy gaze

nor some verbal rejoinder,

though all these are at her disposal.

No, she greets attacks of this sort

and the ritual of the gang’s hostile chorus,

with the quiet understanding

that is her steady and unflinching purpose.



Maybe somewhere there is a vault

hidden beneath dark arctic wastes

where busy clerks record each snide snub

for posterity in careful, cautious ledgers.

If so, she knows nothing of these

fault finders and would care less;

future reckonings of right and wrong

before crestfallen villains in the dock

are no concern of hers at all.

So, sitting patiently in her neat suit,

she lets the insults flow on as they will,

comes through their buffeting like a statue,

unchanging and resolute.



Perhaps from time to time she permits

brief inner visions of herself as superhero

winking to an imagined camera

as she speeds on through the air.

But these are small aberrations

in her unswerving mission to bring care

to the tormented butterflies hidden all about her.


Peter Keeble