Nissim Ezekiel: An Alien Insider Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

As a poet is but alien insider,
Dwelling in India and instead of,
Unmindful of Indian ethos, myth, mysticism and historicity
Of the land,
My native land
Its thought, tradition, philosophy,
Religion, spirituality and metaphysics.

A Bene-Israeli, one from the oil-pressers’ class,
Nissim suffers from the acute identity crisis,
People question his credentials,
How far Indian is this Indian Jew,
An Isreali or an Indian indeed,
What the truth behind to reveal, peel off?

A modern poet of the modern age, he just basks
In the warm sunshine of modernity and modernism,
Deriving pleasure from
The modern comforts,
Talking of love affair and the romance of it,
A visit to the theatre.

Talking in the cinema hall,
Seeing off at the airport,
Handshaking and bidding bye-bye,
Welcoming and greeting,
Visiting the art galary,
Talking of foreign visits.

To do the joke and caricature,
Speaking in undertones and ovedertones,
In a convestaional and ironical style of his own
The poetic sequence of his,
The poet chuckling
Holding the tongue in cheek.