All You who Sleep Tonight -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem sent in by Sukrit Mehra

(Poem #650) All You who Sleep Tonight All you who sleep tonight Far from the ones you love, No hand to left or right And emptiness above - Know that you aren't alone The whole world shares your tears, Some for two nights or one, And some for all their years. -- Vikram Seth

Doesn't one feel inadequate at writing these commentaries. How can one
express in words, thoughts behind the words? How can one cross those
limitations? But this poem, I think, will appeal to most of us. Anybody who
ever lived must have been lonely, sometime or the other. Especially in this
day and age.

        "The global village" is a euphemism for the "every person for
himself - commando operation - world", where we exist now. It gets
lonely here. Living across oceans, away from family, friends and
familiarity. Somehow this poem always reminds me of "Brothers in Arms"
by Dire Straits.

  "...Someday you'll return to,
  your valleys and your farms
  and you'll no longer burn to be
  Brothers in Arms."

But then that is just half of the story - what about the people whose
loneliness is something much more incurable and not to do with geographical
location. What about them.

This poem has always been special to me... It says, "hey it happens, its
natural". And when nobody is there, it is.  I cherish its existence in my
life.

Sukrit

Links:

 We've run one Seth poem before - see poem #460

 http://www.cc.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Seth.html has a biography of Seth and
 a writeup on his opus 'A Suitable Boy'.