She

Lakshmi Kannan

SHE wears well-tailored clothes

and value judgements withflair
filling them out with her form
that houses a being
tight and spring-tensed.

She is house-proud
(as she needs to be)
her dining room simply gleams
with clean health
cheerful carnations on the table,
bursting with colours, tempered with
the white of lady's lace.
Sitting and living rooms
Breathing an air of uncluttered ease
the floors swept clean
as her empty heart.

Through the open doors

she stares across at the
orderly backgarden
tracing her lengthening shadow
on long afternoons of pealing stillness.
Outside, the young mango tree has
blossomed biennially, like a rare poet.
A rash of new, glossy leaves,
shimmering copper, and on the branches,
sweet-throated birds evoked
the pain of memories.
She looked at the eagle
soaring above in circles
shrill notes tearing through the cool blue.
She cried silently with the kite
as it glanced down, eyes
frankly red and angry.

*K**K

Lakshmi Kannan, born in Mysore in 1947, is a gifted and versatile bilingual writer, who, under the pen name of
Kaaveri, writes her Tamil fiction. Equally proficient in both Tamil and English, she has translated her own works and
those of others from Tamil into English. She has to her credit nine volumes of poetry, fiction, criticism and translation.
The Unknown Citizen
W.H.Auden
(To JS/07 M 378: This Marble Monument is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whonm there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the
population,
Which our Eugenist was the right number for a
says parent of his generation.
And ourteachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been
wrong, we should certainly have heard.

k** **

Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 29 September 1973), was born in England but later became an American
Ciuzen in 1946. He is
regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20" century. His work is noted Tor is
stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and
content. The central themes of his political issues, and its variety of tone, form ana
poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship
between unique human
beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.
One Art
Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

seem filled with the intent to be lost

so many things
that their loss is no disaster,
the fluster
Lose something every day. Accept
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
master.
The art of losing isn't hard to

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

meant
places, and names, and where it was you
disaster.
to travel. None of these will bring

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
-

Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.
** * **

and writer. She was the Poet Laureate

Elizabeth Bishop (8 February 1911 6 October 1979) was an American poet
-

winner in 1956. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artist's

of the United States from 1949 to 1950, and a Pulitzer Prize most important and
retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia dedicated to
her memory. She is considered one of the

distinguished American poets of the 20th century.

Does it Matter?

Siegfried Sassoo
Does it matter?-losing your legs?
For people will always be kind
And you need not show that you mind
When others come in after hunting
To gobble their mutfins and eggs.
Does it matter?-losing you sight?
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace rememberinng
And turning your face to the
light.
Do they matter-those dreams in the pit?
You can drink and forget and be
gald.
And people won't say that
For they know that you've
you' re mad;
fought for your country,
And no one will worry a bit.

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, (8 September 1886 1 September 1967), an

writer of satirical anti-war verse
during World English poet and author, became known as a
War I. He later won acclaim
volume fictionalised for his prose work,
autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston
Trilogy".
notably his three-
was
among sixteen Great War poets commemorated on On 11 November 1985,
Sassoon
a slate stone
The inscription on the stone unveiled in Westminster
and the pity of War. The
was written
by friend and fellow War poet Wilfred Abbey's Poet's Corner.
Poetry is in the pity". Owen. It reads: "My
subject is War,
My Grandmother's House
Kamala Das

There is a house now far away where once

I received love.... That woman died,
The house withdrew into silence, snakes moved
Among books, I was then too young
To read, and my blood turned cold like the moon

How often I think of going

There, to peer through blind eyes of windows or

Just listen to the frozen air,

Or in wild despair, pick an armful of
Darkness to bring it here to lie
Behind my bedroom door like a brooding
Dog...you cannot believe, darling.
Can you, that I lived in such a house and
Was proud, and loved.... I who have lost
My way and beg now at strangers doors to
Receive love, at least in small change?

***k * *

Kamala Suraiyya aka Madhavikutty (31 March 1934 31 May 2009) was an Indian writer who wrote in English
and Malayalam, her native language. Her popularity in Kerala is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography.
She has written five volumes of poetry. "My Grandmother's House" was published in "Summer in Calcutta" (1965).
The Cy P'lanners

Margarct Atwood
Cuising these residential Sunday
strects in dry August sunlight
what oftends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantice rows, the planted
Sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatly

sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of
paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows

give momentary access to

the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster

when the houses, capsized, will slide

obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.

That is where the City Planners

with the insane faces of political
are scattered over
conspirators
unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;

guessing directions, they sketch

transitory lines rigid as wooden borders
on a wall in the white vanishing air

tracing the panic of suburb

order in a bland madness of snow.

*****

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian author, poet, critic, essayist, feminist and
a
campaignerShe
work is she
among the most-honoured of
authors fiction in recent while she
history; may be best known for her
novelist,
as a is also an award winning poet, having published 15 books of
poetry to date.