Introduction of the Poem:
The Visitor appears in The Exact Name (1965). The poem is based on a common Indian superstition that, if we hear a crow cawing on the roof or a wall in our house in the morning, it is a sign that a visitor would arrive during the day and that we should be ready to receive him. The poet's own experience of this superstition turns out to be true. However, the poet is disappointed when the visitor arrives because he has nothing worthwhile to say to him and their conversation is trivial and insubstantial.
Critical Summary:
Lines 1-6:
The crow has cawed three times at the window of the poet's room. It has been gazing ominously at his eyes. Its wings are somewhat uplifted in a spiteful posture as if holding out the threat of a visitor. It looks tense with its neck stretched out like the neck of a woman scolding her husband. It is not all relaxed and the room is filled with its cawing sound.
Lines 7-12:
The poet has received the crow's message thrice as he sits lost in his thoughts; he has been thinking of the well - being of everything and everyone in the world. He is now worried how he will receive and deal with the visitor whose thoughts and opinions might not be in consonance with his own.
Lines 13-18:
The poet waits all day for the arrival of the visitor because of its being associated with the cawing of a crow. The visitor might be an angel in the garb of a human being or an evil in an unfamiliar shape, trying to test the poet's integrity. If an evil being, the visitor would ruin the poet's sleep at night by holding out some temptation and eventually leading him astray.
Lines 19-24:
But what happened was not what the poet had expected. The visitor came empty - handed; he had come only to while away his time. No doubt, he had good intentions. But he had nothing important to say; all his talk was trivial and inconsequential. In fact, there was more substance in the smoke that their cigarettes emitted than there was in their conversation.
Lines 25-30:
The poet realized how mistaken he was in his assumptions about the visitor. His arrival was as trivial and routine as everyday occurrences in our lives. He had failed to foresee that miracles take place only inside the human mind and that, outside the mind; one sees only such ordinary things as the figure woven into a carpet by the carpet - maker and looking conspicuous. Or, one sees only the changes which take place in the man - woman sexual relations, or the change of seasons.
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