City Streets

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.