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A Letter

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5K views2 pages

A Letter

Uploaded by

althafvellanchola46
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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A Letter

Almost I can recall where I was born;


The hot verandas where the chauffeurs drowse
Backyard dominion of the ragged thorn,
A d a eless ser a ts i y Father s house,
Whispering together in the backyard dirt
Until their talk came true for me one day:
My father hugging me so hard it hurt,
My mother mad, and time we went away.
We travelled and I looked for love too young.
More travel, and I looked for lust instead.
–Tribe

I was not ruled by wanting: I was young,


And poems grew like maggots in my head.
A fighting South-East Asia, with each gun
Talking to me, then homeward to the green
And dung- smeared plains ruled over by the sun.
When I had done with that, I was fifteen.

At sixteen I came here to start again


A i fa t s trip, here a y k e to alk,
I stumbled dumbly through the English rain,
The literature, the drink, the talk, talk, talk.
I wrote about them: It was waste of breath.
For many they were home, for me too wild,
Too walled for me those valleys full of death
Who had grown up as wanderer and child.

Of one dying poet I was not afraid,


In conversation like an avalanche,
Convincing mainly by the noise he made.
He reinforced his views with gin-and-French.
Wrinkled and heaving, tuskless elephant,
He levelled a thick finger, grained with ink.
To Lo e so e ody, that is hat you a t ,
Yes , I ould say, a epti g one more drink.

Three winters I was drunk: one early spring


Brought me first love for you, my great good news;
Then my excuse to play the drunken king,
Staggering through bars, became a bad excuse.
The naked valleys shaken with alarms
Where hawk and serpent watched, were touched, and slept.
Morning and night your image in my arms
Taught me a harder task than to accept.

Earlier in time I prayed to be forgiven.


Through tide-scurf to the acreage of the whale,
Truest to loneliness my sail was driven.
The est ard ha e of the tra eller s tale
I have forgotten, making landfall where

Chin in your hand, you sit and gentle things


Drift on your dream, transparent river where
The swan sleeps with her young under her wings.
– Dom Moraes

Collected Poems: (1957-1987) reedited in 2018 contents may be subject to


copyright© Gandharv Kumar, Arts faculty, Banaras Hindu University Varanasi
India

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