Happy Birthday, Walt Whitman!
Dear Walt, Greetings from India!
It's happy returns for me to your birthday, your lifeyears!
From now not-so-distant Asia, i sing for you whose vision crossed
The oceans to east and west, and not pausing there
But encompassed the cosmos.
You who saw One in the world's multitudes,
So other, so alien, small, bent,
Carrying the load of cruel history
(Who knows if any less now than then),
Seeking evolution in the unfolding passage
Of Time, the full-throated cry for
Freedom, and the joyous affirmation of Life!
As if from that oak in Louisiana, i carry your memory,
In a world deep in distractions,
It is from you a little twig with moss around it,
A microcosm of boundless me.
Sanjib Basu 