Vikram Seth

The first writing I did – apart from school essays and articles for the school paper – was some poems I wrote when I was unhappily lovestruck at University. They were in very free measures, and, indeed, very free syntax. I had read enough modern poetry by then to convince myself that rhyme and metre were passé, and that, anyway, the fierce and miserable beating of my heart was not to be contained by what Frost, I believe, called, with seeming disparagement, ‘rhymey-dimey stuff’. So, unrhymed and unmetered it all poured out, and since I had no poetic control to replace rhyme and metre, most of it was embarrassingly bad. Luckily I never showed it to anyone at that stage, let alone to its onlie begetter. I was looking through some of my papers in a trunk the other day when I came across these poems, and they made me cringe.’

I walked last night with my old friend Past the old house where we first met, Past each known bush and each known bend. The moon shone, and the path was wet.

No one passed by us as we strolled At our sad ease. Though hand in hand We did not speak. Our hands grew cold, Yet we walked on as we had planned.

We did not deal in words or tears. At the dead light we did not rage. What change had...