INDIAN CONTEMPORARY POETRY

THE POET


by P. Lal


For all his wild hair like an aureole, Stammer at parties, slipping from a tram,
Putting off the mending of a sole,
And putting on a mock-heroic Damn!,
He notices the spider’s intestines
Claim harlot, smuggler and blackmarketeer,
And in the clicking grin his eye divines
A moody world of artifice and fear.

Above all, this: When a woman turns
Black clouds of hair, with a rhythmic hand
Weaving their silk in the possessive sun,
He sees her common eyes stretch to a land
O lost, lost; as when repentance yearns
For hope,and love, and finds that there is none.

Purusottama Lal born 1929, in Punjab - India. Poet, essayist, translator, professor and publisher. Founder and publisher of Writer's Workshop in Calcutta where he lives presently.
Under the name of P. Lal, he has written eight books of poetry, over a dozen volumes of literary criticism, a memoir, several books of stories for children, and dozens of translations from other languages, chiefly Sanskrit, into English. He has also edited a number of literary anthologies.