Minor voices and slender anthologies,
The whereabouts unknown
And the slick anthologies not available in the market.
A priority of the small poets, small editors and small critics,
All calling themselves literary fellows
After peddling the stuffs,
Emulating and deriving from
But cutting and pasting today.
A poetaster when he fails to make a name, he edits a journal
As for to be a critic
Under the pretext of a contributing poet,
Wanting to include in papers on his poetry,
Asking the reviewer professor to get theses registered.
All after the editor, the big poet,
The professor for paper publication and promotion,
The scholar too for the same,
All hunting something,
Waiting for something.
The petty-petty men calling themselves big litterateurs,
The students after doing Ph.Ds. call themselves the editors
And authors,
The researchers visiting established poets like to get
Photographed with as for showing to.
Many teacher fellows and Ph.D. students have pressurized Nissim and Jayanta
To comment upon their own poetry,
Instead of interviewing them
As for U.G.C. minor or major fellowships
Or the Ph.D. scholars as for the thesis purpose.
Indian English poetry is in reality no-man’s poetry,
All are poets here, not great poets and poetesses,
But minor poets, petty poets,
I mean the poetasters,
I mean the stuffed men, hollow men of T.S.Eliot,
Alas! the headpiece filled with straw!
The history of an evolving literature, what to say about,
There were neiher the publishers not rthe readers of it,
The Ph.D. done on it used to be considered second-rate theses
Of the weaker in merit professors,
English English-like, do not make it Indian,
Had been the sense of the British-time schooled
And classic-read scholars
And what more to share with you and say to?