The Drive and the Mother's Sleeping Face

The poem opens on the road. The poet is being driven from her parents' house to the Cochin airport, and her mother sits beside her. Turning to look at her, the poet notices that her mother has dozed off. The sleeping face is described as drained of life — dull, colourless, ashen — with the mouth left slightly open in the way of the very tired or the very old. To the poet this pale, motionless face momentarily resembles a corpse, and the resemblance is disturbing. In this first movement the poet quietly registers, with a j …