Old Poet

 

Old poet, you are a spent well,

both in circumference and

your cold damp base-stone –

a centre of depth, in days

you carried weight!

Look at your hollow lungs.

Your voice is a rattling bucket

pulling out of your mouth, empty;

you neither quench thirst

nor raise the water table now.

Your value as a landmark

is also fast depleting,

for you are slowly crumbling in

on the lonely toad of ego

that still croaks somewhere within.

 

 

There is no Routine to Poetry

 

Every day I stand at the well

and lower my rusted bucket.

 

On some days

it goes deep into the hollow echoes

and comes back empty

to my smouldering palms.

 

On other days

the water rises and rises

till the bucket and the entire plain

are drowned in a flood.

Today, it has returned

with this one drop.