thinkALONG! 1 April

A TUESDAY FEATURE

hosts: Padma Rajeswari, K. Ramesh

guest editor: dipankar (দীপংকর)

Only the unpublished poems (that are never published on any social media platform/journals/anthologies) posted here for each prompt will be considered for Triveni Haikai India's monthly journal -- haikuKATHA, each month.

Poets are requested to post poems (haiku/senryu) that adhere to the prompts/exercises given.

Only 1 poem to be posted in 24 hours. Total 2 poems per poet are allowed each week (numbered 1,2). So, revise your poems till 'words obey your call'.

If a poet wants feedback, then the poet must mention 'feedback welcome' below each poem that is being posted.

Responses are usually a mixture of grain and chaff. The poet has to be discerning about what to take for the final version of the poem or the unedited version will be picked up for the journal.

The final version should be on top of the original version for selection.

Poetry is a serious business. Give you best attempt to feature in haikuKATHA !!

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On the Grasshopper and the Cricket by John Keats

The Poetry of earth is never dead:    

       When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,    

   And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run    

    From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;     

That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead       

       In summer luxury,—he has never done    

       With his delights; for when tired out with fun    

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.    

The poetry of earth is ceasing never:    

       On a lone winter evening, when the frost      

       Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills    

The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,    

      And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,    

      The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

John Keats wrote this poem during an 1816 sonnet competition with his friend Leigh Hunt. The endlessly cheerful song of the grasshopper and the cricket in the poem assures us that “the poetry of earth is never dead”. The natural world is bound together by an unbroken thread of joy. There is no end to sorrows on earth. It was so during Keats’ time, it’s true today as well.

Nonetheless, can we try and refuse to be unhappy, like the tenacious grasshopper or a cricket?

You are invited to defy sorrow and write your poems on the song of life.  

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