Response Poem 1 Stars: Arundhati Bhande

There Were No Cheap Stars
-Arundhati Bhande 

What do you gift someone you've loved for a year?
Something special, unique, maybe bizarre
I turned to page 3.6.5. in Shahid's work
and found Stars

Searched extensively for an answer and found
a website that commodifies planets and stars
I looked, I scrolled, I clicked, I located
but there were no cheap stars

So much variety in the brightness of these stars
I, a penniless speck on earth trying hard
to negotiate, reduce and bargain for
shiny specks, these stars

Such a sweet thought to name a celestial body
after a special somebody, but if you think far,
who the hell gave us the authority to
exchange pennies for stars?

 (Note: This is a response poem to Agha Shahid Ali's poem- Stars, in the book The Veiled Suite)

Comments

  1. RubinaApril 8, 2019 at 11:14 PM

    Hi Arundhati,

    Thank you for mentioning the page number in the poem! :D
    I really like your response.. it's easy on the eyes and reads well. I'm not sure I get what you're saying in the third stanza - "So much variety in brightness". What does this line signify?

    ReplyDelete

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