Poetry

By

Sunil Sharma

Don as a reader/actor

Alonso Quixano

An avid reader of romances

Becomes the Don Quixote at around 50 years of age

Re-writing a script for him as an actor.

This concord between reading and writing

Reality and representation

Fact and fiction

Seeing and imagining

Text and belief system

Drives the story of the famous gentleman from La Mancha.

When as a reader you want to re-enact a favouraite narrative

Each one of us becomes a beloved character of our choice;

The real as the fictional

The imagined as the real.

Inserted as a reader/spectator

At the critical juncture—

Where Alonso/ Don perceives the farm girl as Dulcinea as his muse

I find his First Sally as the start of a just adventure.

The Don—believing the words—wants the world to be equal and fair

And if found wanting in his estimate, ready to correct the situation

Through active intervention—by transforming from a reader to an actor

In the great drama.

He wields the lance for the poor and the abused

And paints Aldonza Lorenzo, as his noble beloved!

By imagining a farm girl worthy of his love and praise

The questing Don elevates the humble as the true subject

Of his democratic quest for an equitable order of affairs.

The desire to re-imagine a sordid world

And make it better—well, that is the

Real task of every great story-teller!

Cervantes

Shakespeare

Both—immortals

Both actors re-casting their own narratives!

Both re-imagined the cruel world

A close familial kinship is there

Between a Don and a Hamlet/Lear!

Sunil Sharma

Mumbai-based, Sunil Sharma is a widely-published writer. He has already published  14 books: four collections of poetry, two of short fiction, one novel, one a critical study of the novel and co-edited six anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award—2012. Recently his poems were published in the UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree.