There is no room in this world for a retiree.

He is supposed like some Hindu widow

To hide himself, to shun the very society

That once saw him as someone to know.

There is nothing but time for a retiree.

His years elongate into months, days,

Hours, minutes, seconds. He is now free

To forget that weekdays follow Sundays.

There is no spring or summer for a retiree,

no second autumn, only a winter’s cold.

He learns what widows know, that charity

Is for the crowded poor, not the lonely old.

There is no future for a retiree.

He must his own funeral pyre heap

And widowed by the world become its sati,

To the lullaby of his children, slip into sleep.

Wait! Isn’t God the divine retiree?  

Did not He retire after six days of work?

But He too succumbed to the retiree’s vanity

Of reminiscing, of admiring his life’s handiwork.

F.S. AIJAZUDDIN

18 June 2015