Poetry

Edward Zulawski photo

By

Sunil Sharma

The Jilted Lover

The gods, hills and beaches calling

and a dulcet voice trailing over!

hear—Sappho singing softly this night

among the trees, in the star-lit woods

overlooking the melancholic ocean

her bosom ready for another jilted lover!

why? why?

a woman

a poet

a poet

a woman

celebrating love-life

should commit suicide by jumping from the craggy cliff for a sod?

or by keeping stones in pockets, standing in the river

or turning on the gas, to seek quick exit?

why?

to escape pain

censure

intense longing for a worthless man?

a brave woman

finding life useless

takes the extreme step

and walks into history, forever

or

perhaps—

to turn into an eternal song

her own rejection by a brute

being heard often

on a wind-swept beach

recurring in the sighs of other

jilted lovers, still undecided about next step.

conditions for poets

women

women poets

remain the same, despite the intervening centuries and advancement.

Sunil Sharma

Sunil Sharma is Mumbai-based senior academic, critic, literary editor and author with 19 published books: Six collections of poetry; two of short fiction; one novel; a critical study of the novel, and, eight joint anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism, and, one joint poetry collection. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award—2012. His poems were published in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, in the year 2015.

Sunil edits the English section of the monthly bilingual journal Setu published from Pittsburgh, USA:

For more details, please visit his blog.