The poets were debating on the sequence of death;
Who died first whether the poet or the poem?
He stood there listening to the wailings
of both the poets and their verses
Inside there were chairs
with swollen belly,
tables that have gone crazy,
sensual shadows
and junk of books,
even as the sales and discussions
went on an on
Then he got scared of death
He was not ready to
become a corpse
Instantly he felt the urgency
of poetic metaphors
to break away from the confines
of the bookshop
In a trance he recalled the days when
snake charmers, poets and teachers
were suffering for want of lovers
It flashed back how the poetic talent
in his molecules began to blow apart
since ages
And how love was orphaned
denied of the right to survival and fortunes
The poet in him was born by chronicling
the erosion of culture and meanness of the past
He tried his best to see that the carcass
of his desires did not turn into poetic imageries
Meanwhile even his corpse
was on the look out for a safe haven
outside the world of verses
to avoid molestation,
and to escape from
the lusty glare of the poets
The trees and insects resorted
to futile rituals to possess
the life of poets
but got back nothing but grief
He couldn’t resist the temptation to
hold on to his moral right for existence
outside the realm of history.
The debate of the poets went on unabated
As the book of night remained wide open
they began unwrapping
the cartons of lust and liquor
trans: saj mathews
