Coitus

 Yeah, I love the scandalous title, and the scandalizing element. It’s well past my bedtime as I’ve been trying to get to bed earlier everyday. However, only wring this, because it’s ready. As in I wrote it last night. However, this is not really a new title, have no idea how this resurfaced in my memory, but it did and it’s been haunting me. 

I had originally written this poem in the early to mid 1980’s. It had the same sense as this one, but that was the original that had flowed and this version is a contrived effort, because I longed to recreate the sense of what this word had then meant to me. 

A lot of my poems come from reading or hearing a word, and then it just triggers a thought process that unfolds on paper. So here it was again, hounding me, but the thing is, I can’t find that poem. I remember taking the poem along with some others to a publisher who wanted to look at them. They were also a printing house and as I sat with him in his office in Bombay, an IIT student came and joined us to talk about something they were printing for the IIT. Tea was ordered and as he waited for the tea, I resumed with my conversation, and was reading out the titles, when at Coitus, the poor young man almost jumped in his seat with a shocking expression on his face. I think I was embarrassed as well, but how presumptive was he? Today I look back at that episode with a certain impish grin, a naughty glee, to have scandalized someone who clearly possessed not an ounce of the sensibility of a poet’s soul. It’s not for nothing that the term poetic license has been coined. 

The coitus between my pen and paper lives in a green notebook. Between scratches and rephrasing, here is the second draft. It’s not as intuitive or endearing as the original, but it conveys the same sense. 

Coitus

She cries out, thirsty, parched 

Yearning for her mate;

The one that lights the world, 

Why is he so late? 

Yearning, yearning, for him to come,

And dissolve with and in her,

As patiently she awaits

Then a clap of Thunder 

The Earth is drenched deep,

Soaked she stands inhaling

What only together they can create,

Petrichor.

Monsoon comes gushing forth 

To meet its Mate. 

The world celebrates. 

Coitus between soil and sky.

Veenu Banga

12:04 am 

May 16th, 2025. 

Just re-read as I wrote, and made more changes, not at all satisfied; too many crossed out lines and corrections. Completely lacks spontaneity. Will have to work to fix this, but can’t resist the …as I  grin at the memory! 

Veenu Banga

12:08am

May 16, 2025.