Poets don’t allow poems to take an aeroplane;
they are afraid of the heights
it might take their lines to.
They believe that poetry should stand
firmly on firm ground.
If it flies, it should fly on its own wings,
not in an aeroplane to non-human heights.
For from those high altitudes a poem,
they believe, might see things
that would appear too small,
which are to us so big down here.
A poem should help us see things
in their true size and colours;
not so, if a poem looks down
from an air-borne plane.
A poem should not be cut loose
like a kite from its thread;
it may look cute in its mad flight, but
only like a an aeroplane nose-diving
to the ocean far below on the earth.
Poets don’t allow poems to take an aeroplane;
they are afraid of the heights
it might take their lines to.
Poet’s Bio:
Prathap Kamath teaches English literature at University of Kerala. He has published a collection of poems Ekalavya: a book of poems.His is poems have appeared in several journals of national and international repute and anthologies namely The Poetry of War and Peace and Words on the Winds of Change, both published from Canada by www.blurb.com. He is one among the 150 poets featured in The Dance of the Peacock-An Anthology of English Poetry from India published by Hidden Brook Press, Canada. He is also a short story writer. Blood Rain and Other Stories (Delhi: LiFi, 2014) is his first collection of stories in English.
Illustration by Alan Van Every (Featured image on the front page)