Nail Cutting and Love

The poem talks of difficulty of an old man who is not able to cut his own nails and compares himself to other poets.

Nail Cutting and Love

Tagore, this is for you after one fifty years :

who clipped your nails in offshore lands�"

that foreign lady ? Or the chick adulators ?

There isn’t any photograph of yours with

your hands placed on laps of young ladies

cutting nails ; your feet on Ocampo’s knee ?

.

May be the girls on whose shoulder  Gandhi placed

his wings, cut his nails. As you know, it’s so painful

to reach the nail-cutter up to one’s feet at  old age�"

oh, men like me without young girls for company

are aware. Love’s strange demand from senile age.

.

Gossipers say Sunil Ganguly did have for each nail

a struggling poetess. Joy Goswami also have had

the same ; the girls closed eyes and jumped  into muck.

I’d seen  Shakti Chattopadhyay’s lover clipping his nails

in the small Chaibasa room. Does Sharat do same for Bijoya ?

.

Yashodhara, did Trinanjan ever cut your nails ?

Subodh, have you ever took Mallika’s feet

on your lap and cut her nails ? Just a glance

at the feet of a poet tells you how lonely he is.

Think of Jibanananda ; he has been searching for

Banalata for thousand years for his nails to be cut.

( Translation of Nokh Kata O Prem )

Mumbai 2010

Immortality