When it comes to Indian poets, Vikram Seth is undoubtedly my favorite. His poems convey the deepest of emotions through the simplest of words, and that isn’t an easy thing to do.

In today’s #NaPoWriMo post, we will be celebrating some of the best poems by Vikram Seth. We hope you will enjoy reading them just as much as I did curating them for you.

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Best poems by Vikram Seth

1. What’s in it? 

I heard your name the other day
Mentioned by someone in a casual way.
She said she thought that you were looking great.
A waiter passed by with a plate.
She reached out for a sandwich, and your name
Went back from where it came.

But like a serious owlet I stood there,
Staring in mid-air.
I frowned, then followed her around
To hear, just once more, that sirenic sound –
Those consonants, those vowels – what a fool!
I show more circumspection as a rule.

I love you more than I can say.
Try as I do, it hasn’t gone away.
I hoped it would once, and I hope so still.
Someday, I’m sure, it will.
No glimpse, no news, no name will stir me then.
But when? But when?

2. Unclaimed

To make love with a stranger is the best.
There is no riddle and there is no test. –

To lie and love, not aching to make sense
Of this night in the mesh of reference.

To touch, unclaimed by fear of imminent day,
And understand, as only strangers may.

To feel the beat of foreign heart to heart
Preferring neither to prolong nor part.

To rest within the unknown arms and know
That this is all there is; that this is so.

3. Mistaken

I smiled at you because I thought that you
Were someone else; you smiled back; and there grew
Between two strangers in a library
Something that seemes like love; but you loved me
(If that’s the word) because you thought that I
Was other than I was. And by and by
We found we’d been mistaken all the while
From that first glance, that first mistaken smile.

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4. How Rarely All These Few Years

How rarely all these few years, as work keeps us aloof,
Or fares, or one thing or another,
Have we had days to spend under our parents’ roof:
Myself my sister, and my brother.

All five of us will die; to reckon from the past
This flesh and blood is unforgiving.
What’s hard is that just one of us will be the last
To bear it all and go on living. , as work keeps us aloof,

Or fares, or one thing or another,
Have we had days to spend under our parents’ roof:
Myself my sister, and my brother.

All five of us will die; to reckon from the past
This flesh and blood is unforgiving.
What’s hard is that just one of us will be the last
To bear it all and go on living.

5. All You Who Sleep Tonight

All you who sleep tonight

Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above –

Know that you aren’t alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

6. Round and Round

After a long and wretched flight
That stretched from daylight into night,
Where babies wept and tempers shattered
And the plane lurched and whiskey splattered
Over my plastic food, I came
To claim my bags from Baggage Claim

Around, the carousel went around
The anxious travelers sought and found
Their bags, intact or gently battered,
But to my foolish eyes what mattered
Was a brave suitcase, red and small,
That circled round, not mine at all.

I knew that bag. It must be hers.
We hadnt met in seven years!
And as the metal plates squealed and clattered
My happy memories chimed and chattered.
An old man pulled it of the Claim.
My bags appeared: I did the same.

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Suggested read: #NaPoWriMo Best Poems By Ronald Koertge That Celebrate The Ordinary

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This is all we have on today’s post on the Best Poems by Vikram Seth. This is, however, not an exhaustive list, and if we have missed out on some of your favorites, then please feel free to add them in the comment section below.

Until next time!

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