By Satyapal Anand
The sky wearing one glittering eyeglass
Looks accusingly at me —- “Where is our honor?
Shameful it was for you to deny her the opportunity. “
“Opportunity to seduce me,” I ask,
“Seventyish she is … a widow of eighteen years
Trying to engulf me in her upper and lower chasms?
(Both deep and vacuumed clean)
No substance there, Sir, a hollow head
And a vacuous womb. No! Sir, No! “
The glittering eyeglass slides down to the nose-tip
So what? The sky asks: Is your male ego well-fed now?
Forsaken by her dreams she lies sick now
In trying to fill her vacuolate head with knowledge
She had a thousand reveries of affairs past…
I cut the single-lens-sky-eye short … “What about
Her lower drawer? Has it become solvent again?
That was full of holes too… a vacuolated container.
“….I don’t know”, the somber sky said. “I never could
Look that far down you know my monocle would have fallen.
(He was about to say inside but he checked himself)
I said, “Next time, O high priest of Heavens
When you look down, tie it to your bushy eyebrow
So it would not fall. So far as I’m concerned,
I am unconcerned…. You see, Sir, I lack male grace
Like John Donne’s legendary lovers, I die
A hundred deaths in one affair
But when I rise again
I am still a pretty, parochial Satyapal*
So insouciant I am.
…………
*The name Satyapal in Sanskrit means “The Truth Keeper”.
