Smita Agarwal

Smita Agarwal Poems

That impossible love
Dwells in miraculous space
Where, the cliff - mad
With isolation and grief -
...

From you, I learnt how to break your heart.
You taught me every aspect of the art,
Each time you cracked open mine,
Like an egg-shell or a bone;
...

Smita Agarwal Biography

Smita Agarwal is the author of two collections of poems, Wish-granting Words, Poems (Ravi Dayal: New Delhi,2002) and Mofussil Notebook. Contemporary Indian Poetry in English (Brown Critique/Sampark: Calcutta,2014) . Her poems have been widely anthologized in magazines and books such as Nine Indian Women Poets (OUP: 1997) , Verse: Indian Poetry Feature (UK/USA) , Reasons For Belonging, (Penguin: 2002) , Quote poet Unquote: (Copper Canyon Press, USA: 2008) , Indian English Women Poets (Creative Books: New Delhi,2009) , We Speak in Changing Languages (Sahitya Akademi: New Delhi,2009) and The HarperCollins Book of Indian Poetry,2012. She has won awards sponsored by the British Council for her poetry and has been Writer in Residence at the universities of Stirling, Scotland and Kent, U.K. Her critical articles have appeared in Poetry Review (UK) and Journal of Commonwealth Literature (UK) . She is Professor of English, University of Allahabad, India, and editor and translator for Plath Profiles. Her hobby is Indian music and her songs are available on http: //www.beatofindia.com and You Tube. Her latest work is 'Marginalized: Indian Poetry in English', ed. Smita Agarwal, (Rodopi: Amsterdam and New York,2014) .)

The Best Poem Of Smita Agarwal

Endeavour

That impossible love
Dwells in miraculous space
Where, the cliff - mad
With isolation and grief -
Embraces, in a death-grip,
The void;
Where, the raging sea
Rushes to kiss the horizon -
Cold and detached;
Where, land - flattened,
Trod upon, weighed down,
Nevertheless, lifts itself to lie
With the sky, one last time …

We must go on
Towards this fabulous place
Talked about by Shams and Rumi;
This northern star
Which, maybe, does not exist...

There will be times
When the feet, bruised and torn,
Will give up.
The hands will turn limp,
Our parched lips will crack
And ooze,
The eye will spot vultures circling
And quietly accept defeat.

The body will gradually become insentient...
In that interregnum
Between awareness and coma
Will come the last upsurge
Of desire...
And you will rise, ever so lightly,
On the wings of endeavour
And find yourself,
Intrepid traveller,
Just once,
Again...

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