Within the Boundaries of my Feet

Is it necessary to write poetry? I have never thought about it. The necessity of writing will impede its naturalness and spontaneity. Poetry is art as well as craft. Neruda s poems are art in their highest form and they are so ingeniously crafted that they tenaciously hold on to their originality even in their translations. Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines is a beautiful example. Poems of Shiv Kumar Batalavi should be heard and read in their original form. The pain and the pathos they carry tightly cling themselves to the mother tongue. Translated into other tongues they approximately convey the poetic meaning but not the total emotional content. Rukh is an illustration as most of his poems are written originally in Punjabi. The poems of Eliot and Cummings are the best examples of the highest form of craft. They too if not defy certainly resist translation.