I am accused of penchant

To set the world aright,

When a pure poet, don’t we know,

Must inward peregrinate.

 

But when I see a shattered bone,

Or famine in the eye,

I would much less a poet be,

More a remedy.

 

I am askance at any poet

Whose quick of empathy

May contemplate miseries

From a glow of purity.

 

A pure thought disembodied of

The yield of a pure act

Is a vase of filigree fine,

With no flowers in it.


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Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society. His columns on the Znet have a global following. Raina taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is the author of the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. He has several collections of poems and translations. His writings have appeared in nearly all major English dailies and journals in India.

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