'Oh,Kolkata! My Kokata!'

[arunansu]

‘Oh. Kolkata! My Kolkata’


rain beads glitter
in the halo of streetlamps,
i watch you in a candle flame
within the makeshift dwelling
of a street urchin

a local train sheepishly dissects
the morning fog
you’re a sulky face by the window

i read symptoms
of your newest disease in newspapers;
two sparrows twitter inside your rib-cage
dreaming of a winter-home

O Kolkata, my Kolkata,
i discover you as an abandoned child
wailing beside the trash dump

i open a casket full of decaying
tube-colours, and search for a lost one;
nagging flies keep tasting
a pile of sweets in a shop

[Ros]

Enjoyed this very much, aru. Great images. I love the shift of ideas in the last verse - not sure how they fit into the big picture, but I enjoyed that mystery.

Ros

[Amadeus]

Nicely done Aru. The imagery reminds me of something Ezra Pound would write, and jerks neatly into a more dramatic "O Kolkata!", a stark lingual juxtaposition when we consider the silky tones of the prevailing stanzas, and I think that's key really isn't it, as this verse is a modern take on an older way of writing, and the "O Kolkata" kind of hints back to the older days . Like it

Regards
Gaz

[arunansu]

Thanks Ros, Kolkata is a very nostalgic place. You keep searching for the lost colours there!
Thanks Amaedus.

[Lovely]

Aru not cheaply I say this but you do have the eye of a poet but more, much more, your sincerity ever sweet....


Lx

[arunansu]

Thank you, Lovely, for the kind words. Hope to improve. Smiles.

[manfriday]

This is a really great poem. I love all your stuff Aru, but this one has more flesh on it and is even richer. Thank you! I also like the timeless feel that the title gives it, and how it stands in contrast to the contemporary style you write in. It's a good Indian answer to Blake's 'London' which also points to how things carry on with repetitive certainty from generation to generation, like you suggest with you newspaper symptoms.

Thank you!

[manfriday]

I've re-read it a couple more times, and am a little bit uncomfortable with how it ends. I think the final stanza could be made to feel a bit more epic with a more bolstering finish. It kind of hangs in the air at the end and leaves me feeling a little bit unsatisfied which is a shame after such beautiful imagery... Just a thought.

H

[arunansu]

Thank you Manfriday for your reply. No my thought on the ending was that I wanted it to close with the "nagging" "obstinate" spirit of Kolkatans. We face so much troubles, hassles etc still that doesn't deter us from licking the nectar of life. That's Kolkata for you. That's exactly how I wanted it to end.

[Helen Bywater]

I love this Aru, from the first image to the last.

I'll just mention a small point of English, as you're still learning it. it's not in your poem, but your last comment. We don't use "much" quite how you used it. We use it with mass nouns (nouns that aren't pluralised) eg. much rain, much money, much laughter. With plurals like troubles and hassles, we use "many" instead. Trouble can be a mass noun as well - it's correct to say "many troubles" or "much trouble", but never "much troubles".

Helen

[arunansu]

Thank you, Helen.
One question: "nouns that aren't pluralised" - are they called "collective noun"?
Thanks for the help. Smiles.

[Helen Bywater]

My pleasure.

No, they're not the same thing, although the terms are sometimes confused. For instance "herd" as in "a herd of sheep" is a collective noun, and that can be pluralised, as in "many herds of sheep". Here's what Wikipedia says about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun

[arunansu]

Loads of thanks, Helen, for clearing up a confusion. That was really very helpful. Thanks again.