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The Insouciant I. (A fantasy)

By Satyapal Anand

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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”.  

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