42opus
is an online magazine of the literary arts.
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.
Source:
http://42opus.com/v6n3/attheticketwindow
