Jayanta Mahaptra’s The False Start Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Jayanta Mahapatra’s The False Start, which appeared in 1980
From Clearing House, Bombay,
Begins with A Day of Rain poem,
Followed by more,
Such as Suppose, Today, Absences,
The Gift of Night, Poem For Angelia Felston,
Another Evening, Last Sadness, The Gradient of Dreams,
Through The Stone, Woman In Love, A Sailboat of Occasions,
Bound, The Secret, Slum, Pain, The Rain Falling,
After The Rain, Time Drawing In,

The Mountain, The Storm, The Rising, The Accusation,
A Sense of Adventure, Shadows, A Sense of Obvious,
The Moon Moments, Ash, The Day, A Kind of Happiness,
The Day After My Friends Became Godly And Great,
The Years Down, The House, The Retreat,
Tonight I Hear The Water Flowing, The Hour From The Window,
Steps In The Dark, the poems one by one

To continue with again, The Door,
The Abandoned British Cemetery At Balasore, India,
The Evening That Is To Come,
Measuring Death, A Certain Refrain,
The poems figuring in to confirm it
That he is absurd, existential,
A poet of the void,
The shadowy space,

Who to answer his questions,
What is this world,
Why are we here,
What the purpose of living,
What does it stay here,
Who is what,
Who can but say it?