Calcutta Poems
Winter composed a number of poems during his Calcutta life which have been published under the title Guest and Host. According to the book cover, this group of poems "records the experience of being welcomed into the household of a foreign country". Many of the poems deal with the commonplace. The majority of the volume comprises two long poems. The first, a sonnet-sequence, "Guest and Host", from which the collection takes its title; and the other a poem on the 2001 earthquake in Kutch, "Earthquake at Kutch". "Guest and Host" is predominantly lyrical in style and diction; in "Highway 34" he writes as follows:
Sometimes when I walk where trees were tall
I am in a prisoner-of-war camp debating poetry
with Colonel-General Loblein. Hostilities were over
and I was in charge of the German Officers' 'hostel'
outside Jessore. As part of my duties
I re-interpreted the Geneva Convention on canteen rights.
"Earthquake at Kutch" is less lyrical:
Shadows of trees, branch-shadows, shadows of leaves
stray in the dust. Only the trees are standing.
Slight shapes chequer a quiet space of ground.
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“The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient poems which bear his name, though of less fame and extent, are, in many respects, of the same stamp with the Iliad itself. He asserts the dignity of the bard no less than Homer, and in his era, we hear of no other priest than he.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)