They Said It Poetry Is Imagery And Photography Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

They said it poetry is imagery and photography which I understood it not
When said it they,
As had I known it as lyrics embedded into,
Poetry as musical thought and lyrical effusions,
Poetry as the lyrics of life,
Lyricism sung to the lyre.

Again, said he, said it they and read I that poetry is imagery, photography
And the poet a photographer, an imagist,
With the camera photographing, taking the snaps of,
The media lensman not, the modern man,
Broken, shallow and hollow,
Thoughtlessly taking the photos
And making images, the images of life.

They went on snapping the photos and pictures, drawing images
Complex and terse, as word-plays and puzzles,
Which I understood it not;
The art models which they made
I could not comprehend,
As their images had not been so easily comprehensible.

Their imagery they drew it from modern city and urban life and culture,
Thought and tradition, life-philosophy and attitude,
Not from nature and the rural side,
The farmlands and the mud-houses, lambs and shepherdesses,
But rampant urbanization and townsliving and town-culture,
As they seemed to have forgotten the intrinsic values of morality and ethics.

Their imagery terse and tedious, complex and tangled, I could not all alone
As sought I the help of others in
Making them out,
The poems for our perusal
And the photographs they snapped
Were of the models, fashion designers and interior decorators,
Mechanics, technicians and architects of words.

Their imagery seemed to be of robots, machine men, of the machine age,
Of machine tools, screws and rotation,
Of techno marts,
The hi-fi girls and boys doing hi-hello, bye-bye in many a modern style,
Oh, the variations many!
Oh, their imagery and photography had been from modern art and its specimens,
Of those artistic and sculptured art-models and paintings in dots and lines!

And imagistically penetrated they
Climate change, global warming, atomic summer,
Natural devastation,
Exotic wilds shorn off their beauty and mystery,
But kept mum on spiritual barrenness, moral degradation and ethical vacuum
And the loss of values.

I could not understand where were they going to, where they led away to,
I mean the modern men, the hollow men,
The men of the barren land,
Waste, infertile and sterile,
Without vegetation.

I asked him what they were penetrating, what they were picturing
But said it they not,
And on finding them answering not, I turned not to
As for my answer,
Took to the trail of the as usual thought,
Leading me to malls, plazas, five star hotel and multi-complexes
With the air-conditioned stories, balconies, lifts, parks and gyms.

As a town boy, traced I the mannequins at the glassy entrance of the dress-material shop
And took I them as for beauties, belles or blondes modern or English,
But actually were not,
I came to feel it later, enquired about
To find to my utter astonishment
That they were a type of dolls, life-size cut-outs, wax models.

And my letters did not reach them
And I could not my wishes and feelings to them
While entering the plaza,
This was my first experience,
This was my first tryst with modernity,
Modern life, culture and living.

Again, I saw the robot girl as a salesman,
I smiled at her,
With the bouquets of flowers
And love-letters in my heart,
Seeing her at the shop, selling goods just like a florist-girl or as a personal secretary,
Or asking me to enter into,
But the smile of hers was not exactly a human smile,
As it returned me not the same luscious smile
And I felt sad and sorry for her being irresponsive.