Light Verses Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

How meaningful is Ogden Nash,
What sense is it in being nonsensical,
A study of nonsense verses!

Sometimes one likes to lighten
The load of studies
As did he M.K.Naik
In his light verses.

To turn the things in a Jonathanian way,
In a topsy-turvy state
To mean and demean.

The Apple Cart being driven
And the apples falling,
Spilling out.

Hamlet
Or Indian Paglet,
How to say it?

Where are they waiting
And for whom?
When will He turn up?
Who Godot, why to make wait for?

She loved him not
And fell in love with her,
Keats,
Why did he not propose before
I had been so much in love?

Uncle Podger's poetry,
When will you write?
Mobile in the pocket of yours
And you searching for it.

Sons and Lovers,
Lovers and Sons not,
Haven't you?
Women in Love,
Haven't you
Men in Love?

Lady Chatterleys' Lover,
Confuse you it not
With Lady Chatterjee's!
Samuel Jonson's Lives of the Poets,
The English Poets,
Not the Indian Poets!

Milton's Satan
A fallen angel
Or a villain
Given a role to?

Paradise Lost,
Where the paradise,
Find I not?

Where Mogli and Bagheera
Playing,
Where Bharat with lion cubs?
Cheetahs already gone extinct.

Burns a country boy
Mad after the red rose,
Calling,
My love, love!

Eliot as a pundit
Doing the shraddha
In the Waste Land,
Immersing the asthi-kalasha
Into the Ganga waters
Doing pinda-dana
For the sins of ancestors
And salvation
Just like Bhagirath.

Gray in the cemetery, the graveyard
Reading epitaphs and inscriptions,
Talking with grave-diggers and guards and masons
And the coffin-makers and clergies.

Tennyson sad with weeping and grief,
The handkerchief wet with tears
And the eyes excessively red with weeping!

The father and son fighting
And Arnold capturing historical fights
In between Rustum and Sohrab in Persia
By the river banks.

Browning all for her,
Can go up to Italy
In search of his lady love,
Keeping the photos of Mona Lisa and the Last Duchess
In his dressing room.

My father died,
My mother died, my aunt,
My brother died,
But I could not the history of India,
My history of India,
I do not know
When shall I
My history?

My verses, wait you for me
Till I resume you
After taking my breakfast,
Fly you not away!

India of wallahs,
Paanwallahs, beediwallahs,
Cigaretwallahs,
Doodhwallahs, daruwallahs.

But I hate the doodhwallahs most,
Gwalas, indian gwalas,
I mean the doodh-sellers,
Milkmen
As they mix pond water
Into milk
While coming from the country
With containers,
Small fishes too can be
As Kipling too might have felt
And Steve Jobs too felt it here
After being in fight as for
Watered, adulterated milk.

The dacoits, Indian dacoits
Turbaned and with rifles
Used to come with the group
At the dead of night,
At some awkward time
After getting the message sent across
Or writing a post-card
That we are coming, we are coming,
Be ready for,
Twirling the mustache.

Daruwalla's India,
A daruman's history of India
He writing it not after taking daru,
But a history of beverage, drinks,
Som rasa, sura to toddy, handia, mahua,
Khushwant Singh was an expert of this
And he would have about tastes and intoxication.

There is a letter,
Is a letter,
Tapped he on the door
And Coleridge lost in writing
Kubla Khan,
Himself too a Kubla Khan
Could not complete it
After intercepted, interrupted!

It saddened me, my light spirit
When I came to read about
Wilde put in prison
And about O.Henry on defalcation charges
Decided I to stop my light verses here.