The poem reminds us of the rope dancers, Indian rope dancers, the show men with the makeshift poles and the rope hanging in between and she balancing on the rope tightly showing her shows to hold us back in awe and suspense, wonder and amazement and the children sitting below clapping, which but Hazlitt has long before and it is our pleasure that Kulwant Singh Gill is putting before us again to applaud and to note it with one’s impression and diary jotting. A clumsy girl dancing before with the hair ruffled and unoiled comes before the eyesight, presenting the scene just like the gypsy girl standing before in acrobatics.

What has made her a ropedancer? Why has she taken to rope-dancing? How are her stunts and daredevilry? Holding the breath we see the act, her act of balancing on a rope and the showing of her bare belly. Have we at least tried to know why she does it? Just for the belly, the hungry belly!

If she falls, what will happen? Seeing her, what will a faithful say and what a faithless one? What will a theist say and what will an atheist say? How is the play of eternity? Has it imparted her with talent? Or poverty has? O, does Eternity keep mocking their poor lot? Maybe she improvised this misery.

In the second stanza, the poet speaks about the agnostic taking to the staircase, climbing to reach the top and the fall thereafter. Can the ropeway between heaven and earth be built, can the gap be bridged? What in to be godly and what in being godless?

If firm of hope and optimism, you can and if bleak hope and pessimism take you over, you may hold it differently. But when you tread the tightrope, let dilemma and doubt not disrupt you.

Just through the symbol the poet means to make us understand the whole panorama. The poet is happy to see the acrobat girl performing but is sad to see the agnostic falling miserably which is but Aldous Huxleyean dilemma which he is fraught with. What to say about intellect, intellectuals and intellectuality? How is doubt, suspense, wistful upholding of faith, how frail our modern faith is, he speaks about all these things in this poem! The more we grow wistful and agnostic and sceptic, the more we remain prone to intellectual wavering, doubt and suspense.

Kulwant Singh Gill, formerly Prof & Head, Department of Journalism, Languages and Culture, Punjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana used to write beautiful poems which a few could know about then.

A lithe lass of fourteen
buoyant and fair
on a rope
firm and taut
balances her belly bare
to earn her brinish bread
and
gladdens many a heart.

An agnostic wistful
with doubt distraught
curious and keen
to know the Unseen
balances his burden cerebral
on tight-rope to eternity
to suffer a faithless fall
and
saddens many a heart.