Poetry & Its Readership Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Who reads poetry now-a-days?
The reader reads it not,
The poet reads it,
The contributing poets,
Subscribers and reviewers.

The readers read it not now-a-days,
The contributing poets,
Subscribers and reviewers
Read it today,
The readers not,
But he poets as readers and writers.

Who has time now to read
Poetry,
The things of the mad men
Maddening it all
With their
Sentimentality and emotional outburst?

The number of readers has fallen,
But the number of practitioners
Has doubled it
Adding to the trash
Written and practiced,
The masters of trivia
Writing the doggerel.

The days of classical panditism
Are over
And they write it not
Classically,
But personally and privately,
The things of their dull routine affair,
The poets mundane and worldly.

Small-small city-bred people
Attempting verse,
Rhymes, doggerels, petty things
Like to call themselves
Poets,
But they are not,
The cunning and crafty fellows
Wanting to come into the limelight.

The petty poets, editors and reviewers
And the cringing subscribes,
All are for their odds ad ends,
All after their business,
The people of a far-off land,
Who dwell it here,
But into the dreamland
Of imaginary castles,
Egoistic, maniac and hypocritical.