[Reader-list] the learned ones in the pages of The Hindu (and all those who sleep tonight)

[debjani sengupta]

The learned ones who are writing about their unstinting support to 'peasants' in the pages of The  Hindu (after the spate of violence in Nandigram) remind me of a poem by Donald Justice called 'The Grandfathers.'
Here it is:

    The Grandfathers

                        'Why will they never sleep?' John Peale Bishop

Why will they never sleep,
The old ones, the grandfathers?
Always you find them sitting
On ruined porches, deep
In the back country, at dusk,
Hawking and spitting.
They might have sat there forever,
Tapping their sticks,
Peevish discredited gods.
Ask of the traveler how,
At road-ends, they will fix
You maybe with the cold
Eye of a snake or a bird
And answer not a word,
Only these blank, oracular
Head-shakes or head-nods.






       
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