Untitled -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem sent in by Vikas Kedia

(Poem #1566) Untitled Dark night, and silent, calm, and lovely, That stills the efforts of our lives, Rare, excellent-kind, and behovely No matter how the poet strives To weave with epithets and clauses Your soundless web, he falters, pauses, And your enchantment slips between His hands, as if it's never been. Of all times most inbued with beauty, You lend us by your spell relief From ineradicable grief (If for a spell), and pain, and duty. We sleep, and nightly are made whole In all our fretted mind and soul. -- Vikram Seth

        (from "The Golden Gate")

I had never thought I would be able to appreciate a novel written completely in
verse. But after having read a couple of poems by Seth on Minstrels, I decided
to take up the challenge. And now in last couple of days I have spent
innumerable precious hours (precious because I am in middle of end terms)
devouring it.

Unputdownable has become a cliched word in recent times due to unjudicious use
on the cover of paperback fictions, yet it seems as if the word was meant for
this book. I have found it to be a surprisingly light read, very contemporary
(even though written in the 80's) and at places even profound as this sonnet
illustrates. Being an aspiring computer scientist and student of logic,
I revel in paradoxes. Therefore the paradox in this verse, of a poet trying to
express the enchantment of the night by admitting his inadequacy to do so,
appeals to me in more than poetic sense.

Loneliness seems to be a recurring theme in the writings of Seth, if I can make
that judgement from the poems I have read on Minstrels and this book. But this
book is written in a lighter and humorous vein as compared to poems like "All
You who Sleep Tonight". Word play, alliteration, puns abound. Couple of gems
I have so far come across are "Monday's mundane", "Cultural and haughty and
hortycultural". This book has turned out to be an excellent introduction to the
art of verse for a novice like me.

regards
Vikas