NCERT Book Class 12 English (kaleidoscope) Poetry 7 Time and Time Again

7 Time and Time Again A.K. Ramanujan is one of India’s finest English- language poets. He is best known for his pioneering translations of ancient Tamil poetry into modern English. At the time of his death he was professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago and was recognised as the world’s most profound scholar of South Indian languages and culture. His interests included anthropology and folklore. These influenced his work as a craftsman of English. This poem represents the complex distillation of a lifetime of unusual thought and A.K.Ramanujan feeling. 1929-1993 Or listen to the clocktowers of any old well-managed city beating their gongs round the clock, each slightly off the others’ time, deeper or lighter in its bronze, beating out a different sequence each half-hour, out of the accidents of alloy, a maker’s shaking hand in Switzerland, or the mutual distances commemorating a donor’s whim, the perennial feuds and seasonal alliance of Hindu, Christian, and Muslim— cut off sometimes by a change of wind, a change of mind, or a siren between the pieces of a backstreet quarrel. Reprint 2026-27