A Street-Poet Poem by PARTHA SARATHI PAUL

See, what is happening here!
All my next poems have ganged up
and are yelling like rogue street-dogs.

Yea, you may say, they are putting up a demonstration
in my rummaged and vandalized poetry laboratory.

They are demanding that they be stripped off
all grand ranks and royal grandeur and.......

I am trying hard to avoid any altercation with them
for if they boycott me I will not be a poet anymore.

They all are looking rowdy type urchins overnight.
I have just had some talks with some of them;
those who are stout and sharp tongued- -

They are calling for absolute freedom;
the wild freedom enjoyed by our savage ancestors.

A final meeting has been decided to settle the issue.
I have thought over it and maybe have already made my mind.

What if my poems prance like innocent calves
down any rustic white path or across some idle fields?

Or they play in muddy slush as mirthful game
played by the young ones of the sons of soil?

Or they monkey about here and there
caring little of being wise humans?

What if you love to call them by names
and shoo them off your civilized doors?