Steel Pens Poem by PRATHAP KAMATH

Among the debris of throwaway time
lay a wooden box.
The painters held sway over the house,
and from their digging of unlit spaces
rose the box of steel pens.
A heirloom that went Lethe wise
bearing rings of past labours.
Over a dozen nibs black golden silvery,
all lacklustre from disuse,
from the past, made in England.
My grandfather’s clerical tools
with which he tilled for the empire.
Dip n write dip n write
each dip shall last for a half dozen words,
words that will rule
words that will split and rule.
His writing was watering the fields of power
drawing rhythmically from the inkwell,
the steel pen an outgrowth on his fingers
that sowed its seeds for the master
and to be cut before reaping.

Dip n write dip n write
what a world of difference should
writing with steel pen have made!
How sweet exertion!
When you think of the tomes
that were written with steel pens
War and Peace, The Capital, The Poor
and before that with the quill
and before that with the stylus
the Iliad the Mahabharata Alf Laylah wa Laylah –
the feeble tappings on the keyboard
are they the emerging signs of atrophy?