Famous Bombay Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Bombay poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous bombay poems. These examples illustrate what a famous bombay poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Bombay

...In your bosom we wake up with fear,
In your sky there’s only unending tears,
You always roar, but within,
Hangs silence like a shroud of death.

You are rocked, periodically, by bombs,
Yet, we go about our business,
As if nothing happened, all’s well,
Are we too dazed to protest?

In your hungry, convoluted entrails, 
Lie pauper and millionaire,
Separated ...Read more of this...
by Matthew, John


Dedication

...To the City of Bombay


The Cities are full of pride,
 Challenging each to each --
This from her mountain-side,
 That from her burthened beach.

They count their ships full tale --
 Their corn and oil and wine,
Derrick and loom and bale,
 And rampart's gun-flecked line;
City by City they hail:
 "Hast aught to match with mine?"

And the men that breed from them
 They traffi...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Dedication

...To the City of Bombay


The Cities are full of pride,
 Challenging each to each --
This from her mountain-side,
 That from her burthened beach.

They count their ships full tale --
 Their corn and oil and wine,
Derrick and loom and bale,
 And rampart's gun-flecked line;
City by City they hail:
 "Hast aught to match with mine?"

And the men that breed from them
 They traffi...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Gioconda And Si-Ya-U

...s.
Those Indochina nights...
As the moon swims in the heavens
 like the corpse of a blue-eyed sailor
 tossed overboard,
Bombay watches, leaning on its elbow...
 Bombay moon,
 Arabian Sea.
The fire of the Indochina sun
warms the blood
 lie Malacca wine.
They lure sailors to gilded stars,
 those Indochina nights,
 those Indochina nights..."


Part Three
Gioconda's End


THE CITY OF SHANGHAI


Shanghai is a big port,
an excellent port,
It's ships are taller than
horned mandarin ...Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim

Nocturne of the Wharves

...ailing
front the wharf but do not rest at all.
Tugging at the dim gray wharf they think
no doubt of China and of bright Bombay,
and they remember islands of the East,
Formosa and the mountains of Japan.
They think of cities ruined by the sea
and they are restless, sleeping at the wharf. 

Tugging at the dim gray wharf they think
no less of Africa. An east wind blows
and salt spray sweeps the unattended decks.
Shouts of dead men break upon the night.
The captain calls his crew...Read more of this...
by Bontemps, Arna


October 12

...in Hindi the same word
(kal, pronounced 'kull') means both
yesterday and tomorrow?" "You don't say.
What'll you have?" "Bombay Martini straight up,
with olives, very dry and very cold." "I like
a man who knows what he wants" "Well, I'll
tell you. She was a handsome, self-assured woman,
a practicing physician, 48, bright, in great shape,
played tennis every Friday night,
didn't drink, smoke, or take drugs,
and was looking for a Romeo with brains.
So naturally I didn't phone he...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David

One Viceroy Resigns

...touch,
And, by your lights, to act. It's natural.
I wonder can I help you. Let me try.
You saw -- what did you see from Bombay east?
Enough to frighten any one but me?
Neat that! It frightened Me in Eighty-Four!
You shouldn't take a man from Canada
And bid him smoke in powder-magazines;
Nor with a Reputation such as -- Bah!
That ghost has haunted me for twenty years,
My Reputation now full blown -- Your fault --
Yours, with your stories of the strife at Home,
Who's up, who's ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Bombay Train Song

...s
Who surround and slash with knife
Careful of your arm’s sockets
Lest they dislocate and misery make life.

Welcome to Bombay’s bustling trains
Hold on fast as if you are insane!...Read more of this...
by Matthew, John

The Man Of Bombay

...There was a fat man of Bombay,Who was smoking one sunshiny day;    When a bird called a snipe    Flew away with his pipe,Which vexed the fat man of Bombay ...Read more of this...
by Goose, Mother

The Post That Fitted

...
So they recognised the business and, to feed and clothe the bride,
Got him made a Something Something somewhere on the Bombay side.
Anyhow, the billet carried pay enough for him to marry --
As the artless Sleary put it: -- "Just the thing for me and Carrie."

Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin -- impulse of a baser mind?
No! He started epileptic fits of an appalling kind.
[Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather: --
"Pears's shaving sticks will give you little ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Song of the Cities

...BOMBAY

Royal and Dower-royal, I the Queen
 Fronting thy richest sea with richer hands --
A thousand mills roar through me where I glean
 All races from all lands.


 CALCUTTA

Me the Sea-captain loved, the River built,
 Wealth sought and Kings adventured life to hold.
Hail, England! I am Asia -- Power on silt,
 Death in my hands, but Gold!


 MADRAS

Clive ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Wander-Light

...tched the sunset fading 
From the roads that I marked down, 
And I looked out with my brothers 
From the heights behind Bombay, 
Gazing north and west and eastward, 
Over roads I'll tread some day. 

For my ways are strange ways and new ways and old ways, 
And deep ways and steep ways and high ways and low; 
I'm at home and at ease on a track that I know not, 
And restless and lost on a road that I know....Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

Where Do You Come From?

...made a port under my collar bone with a plastic tube that runs into a blood vessel.
 
 
 
I set out with mama from Bombay harbor.
 
Our steamer was SS Jehangir, in honor of the World Conqueror —
 
They say he knelt on the battle field to stroke the Beloved’s shadow.
 
 
The waves were dark in Bombay harbor, Gandhi wrote in his Autobiography
 
Writing too is an experiment with truth.
 
No one knows my name in Arabic means port.
 
 
On board white people woul...Read more of this...
by Alexander, Meena

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