Like all good shepherd sees to it they do
He is free to play a flute all day.
As well fed tigers and fat sheep drink
from the same pond.
It is an interesting poem (definitely not a great one) that is generally read as a political satire; but, the poem appears to have a more mature tone and dimension to it than being just a political satire. On a higher plane, it talks of the great chain of cosmic balance where tigers have to eat lambs as lambs have to eat grass - all in the game of survival. If you spot cruelty in it, think of it in terms of what a mother tiger should feed her little cub which is genetically programmed to eat only flesh. What is cruelty at one point, becomes a tender act of love at the other. If we miss this point, we miss out much in our understanding of life and nature. After writing a poem on the beauty and innocence of the lamb, it becomes very difficult for even a visionary poet such as Blake to digest that god could also create Tiger which feeds only on 'innocent creatures' such as lamb and sheep! Looking at the tiger that is “burning bright, in the forests of night”, he asks in fear mixed wonder: “Did He, who made the lamb, make thee”?
Arun Kolatkar (1931-2004) was indeed one of the best bilingual poets India has ever had: his contribution to Marathi is as seminal as his contribution to English. Though he won the much coveted Commonwealth Poetry Prize for his first poetry collection, *Jejuri *(1976), he was reluctant to publish another poetry collection until 2004. Not that he stopped writing poetry during this long period; on the contrary, he was silently writing for himself and his small coterie of friends by turning a blind eye and arrogant self to the noise and glamour of the publishing world. During his last months, when he knew he would not survive the cancer that had begun slowly eating his life, he came out with two brilliant collections – *Kala Ghoda Poems* and *Sarpa Satra* on the strength of which he is remembered and revered in the higher echelons of poetry. Four years later, his *The Boatride and Other Poems* was published. It contains his earlier English poems not included in any collections, English translations of his own Marathi poems and Marathi Bhakti poems. Thanks to the efforts and friendship of Arvind Krishna Mehrotra - who is himself a renowned Indian English poet, and Bloodaxe Books - a small but quality publisher of great literature from around the globe, today we have in our hands Kolatkar's *Collected Poems in English* (2010). Though slightly expensive for Indian readers (Rs.1500), trust me, it makes a good gift for yourself and your loved ones interested in poetry.
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