Writings Poem by Daniel Trevelyn Joseph

I had given her all the verse I had written.
She sat like a judge on my productions.

“Some are good, but not poem-poems,
She said, sitting tense in my office-chamber,

Gesturing inverted commas
With both her hands.

My vanity was surely hurt:
What was worse, I knew that already.

“Burn them”, I said.
Didn’t write a poem after that.

Why did her view affect me so much?
Because she had written poetry,
Four pages of her poems
In a marathi magazine I have seen.

Or, is it because I liked her?
She knew a lot about life and love.
She was half my age,
Challenged my academic distinctions

Matching with her own; and,
No stranger to modern literature:
Not as she charged 'square' like me,
She could wander around with ease.

All that was long ago: now I feel
Her comments need not stop
Flow of words or ideas springing,
From being written down.

Nine years are a long period.
Life is passing by…
Let me start writing what I feel,
As I complete sixty-two years today.


20.12.2007