Am back to grumbling about one of my favorite cities. A poem
I read by an old Indian poet, Santan Rodrigues, stayed impressed on my mind with everything it said
several decades back in the early 70s. This urban poem still holds good today
and even more so. Infact, had Mumbai been what it was in the 70s, I am sure it
would have been the best city in India!
Just so I get a chance to read this poem anytime, here it
is, on my blog, with all due credit to Santan Rodrigues.
City Streets
i’v e lived
too long in your arms
to stand the
stench
of gutters
parading our promenades;
blaring
horns –the music you play,
have now
deafened my ears.
greasy seas
you float in, have changed
their song,
its waves the color
of their
foam; and I stand
on a traffic
isle death scared
of creeping
cars. Why do your
unkept walls
hang slogans.
your streets
opening like mirrored
doors into
streets, soon lose their way?
i am tired
of those tall shadows
of skyscrapers,
trodding my path
and the only
greenery I see on your barren roads is dust.
why must my
feet walk, where
people too
busy to talk have
pawned their
tongues? And the rude
nudging of
the crowds remain
the only
warm things I felt.
shucks I’m
thro’ with you,
you rotten
album of overcrowded
slums; and I
am sick of
your tall-talk
and
your canvassing
smile to be enticed
to stay on
like hell!
the city has
lost its hold.
