Lord Of A Dark Sun

There can be a lot
in a name.
Take one that means
Lord of the Sun:
can you dismiss it
as easily as
just plain Rose?
And should its bearer
conceal it behind
a comic synonym
as you did,
Grandfather-Poet,
the farcical comeuppance
is well-deserved:
a doctoral thesis
of Teutonic solemnity
on a fictive author!
Of course you relished the joke
as much as anyone---
your second nature's childlike play,
much as your vassal
in the sky plays hide-and-seek
with clouds, charming
mortal eyes with celestial chiaroscuro.
For every sad and sweet
nuance of feeling
you have a song-and-dance routine.
If that's snide

let me be blunt:
too often your prose
reads like Madame Blavatsky.
Let provincial culture-vultures
and New Age pseud-
o cosmopolitans keep
you in those aspects.
But when our blighted age
catches up with. . .er. . .
your perennial philosophy,
turning your pen
into tormented artist's tool,
when you wield words
like scimitars that slice
through the herd's holy cows
you remain an exemplar
for our entropic millenium,
Lord of the Sun,
Lord of a Dark Sun.

Kaiser Huq teaches English at Dhaka University.