Jay Basu
WAILS OF LANGUID WIND
Readers, how can I share my bread
Of experience with you? I do not know
How to survey what is happening around and
What’s symphonic or discordant with my soul
Nor do I know how to withdraw and depict
All that drifts and dims from an eminence
Nor have I known ever
That fibrous and nervous language of a poet
Which can detail with accuracy
What he suffers, and how and why he suffers
Hardly can I choose that rise and fall of rhythm
To fit myself exactly to the tenor and bass of
His suffering at the very moment of it?
I can say this much! That only infrequently
I do hear the wails of a languid wind and
The fall of someone’s tears on my tinroof
Maybe, it’s nothing but the spatter of raindrops
Hardly can I tell the tears from the drops of rain
