PoetryRepairShop 03.09:102

a poem is beyond the verbal experience of the poem

PoetryRepairShop 03.09:102

Prasenjit Maiti is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Burdwan University, India.

PRASENJIT MAITI

1999


This year crawls toward Calcutta
my beloved misery 
like some tiger famished for more 
and like tongues performing acts 
I have only read in old books 
left over from dear
beloved College Street 
(my intellectual confidant) 
and not felt 
in the blood of my blood;
So do it to me, my love
help me erupt like sadness 
gagged by sadness, 
help me run the streets
naked
screaming Holy Murder
and save my dear old Calcutta
my misery and my most
triumphant defeats;
And yet you are still, still
you are yourself and not mine
(like some middle age fetish,
mindful of some girdle of chastity) 
your young swings lush 
and dangerous
in the air and water and
fire and winter of Calcutta,
and yet you are yourself and
not the years I used to know

Poets
Parts
MAIL

03.09

097
098
099
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108

poetry is a highly complex organization of stratified characters with multiple meanings and relationships - Rene Wellek 1942

PoetryRepairShop 03.09:102



PRASENJIT MAITI
How I Fool My Critics

I write my fearful Indian lines and look up my dictionary for meanings that are not mine and the next moment I worry and so must I because I do not know what my meanings are do you know them, Roopsa? Roopsa you are a name I have played with too much to avoid sex but my dictionary advises me I cannot. ever. have sex like that, and so I remember my pretentious Calcutta schools where figures of speech were admired like women and women like so many pieces of legislation you and I and Roopsa cannot understand. I write my fearful Indian lines and can now only look up in awe at the great bit of nothingness that Roopsa and I had once, defying our dictionary, accepted as nothingness
copyright PRASENJIT MAITI
Poets
Parts
MAIL

03.09

097
098
099
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108



Archives