The Clown
Arpon Sadhukhan 2004 (Kolkata)
The Clown
The girl came, the one in the blue gown,
She came every season to gawk at that silly clown,
What propellers her to come I don’t know why.
So, every time she comes, I just go by.
The clown’s the worst of his kind,
Short-statured ugly, not a muscle to find
Shabby hairs whose ends are painted
Glossy perverse clothes that must be rented.
Yet the girl comes to see him dance
Seeing eye to eye as if to steal a romantic glance,
Seeing this the clown tries to enhance,
Only to be whipped by the ringmaster, Hans.
Every season she comes to him,
Seeing his balance on a wheel’s rim,
And once in a while, she throws him an airy kiss,
He tries to catch only to miss.
The circus calls her the Princess that loved the clown,
She would dance around when the rain would fall down,
While his painted lover would admire her from far,
Keeping all these instances in his good memory jar.
Neither of them spoke, but their eyes,
For they were not full of lies…
And once she did kiss him under the big tree,
After that her, we could never see.
Twenty years later in the same circus,
Amidst the trampoline acts and the ruckus,
She came back in both hands a child,
One was quiet and calm and the other was going wild.
I saw her seated in her usual spot,
A little older and fatter she had got,
And beside her husband maybe,
For that’s all this old man could see.
And then came in that silly joker,
Wearing a silly hat and the symbols of poker,
And as he was acting, he saw her on the seat,
Smiling at him dangling her feet.
His eyes twitched a bit and thunder rumbled from the cloud,
He laughed out pained yet loud,
The audience clapped and they roared,
The girl screamed with all the might she had stored.
She started crying and was taken away,
The clown neither fret nor did he sway,
Even though his eyes were moist there was no frown,
Laughing and entertaining was the job of the clown.
Finally, when the act ended and everybody went,
The clown sat on stage all weird and bent,
Probably he was sad, probably he cried,
I don’t know for the next day he died.
About this poem
It tells a story about a girl and a clown.
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Written on August 19, 2022
Submitted by pnb20.skhan on August 21, 2022
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:15 min read
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Quick analysis:
Scheme | AABB CCDD EEEX FFGG AAHH IIJJ KKLL MMJJ NNOO PPQQ RRAA SSTT |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,072 |
Words | 452 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"The Clown" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/136758/the-clown>.
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