Dom Moraes

The Indian poet and writer Dom Moraes has died, at the age of 66. Here's the Guardian obituary. Here's an article about him from The Daily Star.

His poems seem mannered and old-fashioned to me - I think he's been known more for his prose in recent years, and as a literary celebrity. But here's a poem, from The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets:

Future Plans

Absorbed with each other's flesh
In the tumbled beds of our youth,
We had conversations with children
Not born to us yet, but named.
Those faculties, now disrupted,
Shed selves, must exist somewhere,
As they did when our summer ended:
Leela-Claire, and the first death.
Mark, cold on a hospital tray
At five months: I was away then
With tribesmen in bronze forests.
We became our children, my wife.
Now, left alone with each other,
As we were in four continents,
At the turn of your classic head,
At your private smile, the beacon
You beckon with, I recall them.
We may travel there once more.
We shall leave at the proper time,
As a couple, without complaint,
With a destination in common
And some regrets and memories.
We shall leave in ways we believed
Impossible in our youth,
A little tired, but in the end,
Not unhappy to have lived.