Now Or Whenever, Triolet Refrain Poem by Ananta Madhavan

At the end of the day,
At this moment in time,
In this day and age,
When all is said and little is done,
The need of the hour is to sleep.


But the cell-phone interrupts
With an SMS ad for a nowhere voyage
Or a reminder to settle a prepaid invoice.


The economic poet disdains
The eight-line triolet for its refrains,
He prefers brevity to wordy jargon;
Strikes out “in this day and age”,
And “at this moment in time” to syllables three,
“N..O..W”. But at the end of the day
He tosses and turns but cannot sleep.


In the morning he giggled when he found
That “now” is not short for “Now Or Whenever”.

- - - - - - 11 April,2015