A Half-finished Poem

Nothing bothers me most than a half-finished poem.
Emotion seizes me and I put the first few lines on paper.
And then, all of a sudden, it retreats and I trail off
Like my first expressions of love.
I borrow emotions and select best phrases
Grind them and polish them,
Sew them concealing the seam.
And yet, when I look at them
The last lines look so singularly odd
And I know, for sure, can’t be different to you.

As a school boy I fancied
To become a teacher in the footprints of my master,
And at the college I wanted to be
An officer of some rank.
When I got married, to become
A good husband, a good son and a son-in-law
And as a father to tend my children
Making them responsible citizens.

Having failed halfway through at each enterprise,
I wanted to become a saint
To pray and preach through the rest of my life.
The glib costumes, and the gleaming gray hair
The phalanx of followers and the true truth seekers
Have doubled my doubts
Than I could set at rest any of theirs.

Throwing off the garb, I started looking into poems around me.
I saw poems flowing through unchartered territories,
Making way through untrodden terrains,
And poems on flight to dizzy heights of fantasy alone,
Poems that sang random notes of a symphony,
Poems that touched and moistened my eye,
Poems that ended briefly, but only physically.

When I looked back at my half finished poem,
it lost its sting, and
I am no longer interested in finishing it
Per force or by choice.

4.12.93

On the occasion of JRD Tata repeating his trip to Karachi marking the silver jubilee of his maiden flight. (Karachi to Mumbai on October 15, 1932)