22 October 2006 | Vol. 6, No. 3

At the Ticket Window

Two matrons at the railway ticket windows

reassured us very kindly

it is birth everywhere and no demise

and since everything comes in

and goes nothing out,

we must buy our cheapest fare.


Their tickets were quite fair

since they led nowhere

with Nagas and Barak waters

eating Lumding rails.


Only well-bred tubby pilots

in sudden drunken brawls could

catapult the planes

beyond the stranding Aizawl sky

and much beyond.


But prohibition of a progressive government

has marred it all.


Matrons are right.

Why buy richer tickets

for nowhere?

About the author:

Arun Gaur lives in Panchkula, Haryana, India, and has been teaching English at Chandigarh since 1982. Arun has published one critical book, I Stand Apart: Alienated Center in Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself', and three collections of poetry, The Neurosis Island: Homofuge!, Steppe Tramping with Gorky, and Woodcutters. He is currently working on a series of poems on Mizoram for his anthology, Mizoram-2004, based on thousands of photographs taken there. Some of these poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Ariga, Poetry Magazine, Orbis, Ygdrasil, Eclectica, and Poery Salzburg Review. He can be reached online at tripolia-indianlandscapeimages.com.

For further reading:

See the complete list of work by Arun Gaur at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 6, No. 3, where "At the Ticket Window" ran on October 22, 2006. List other work with these same labels: poetry.

42opus is an online magazine of the literary arts.

copyright © 2001-2011
XHTML // CSS // 508