Some time before Stephen Hawking
came up with his voice synthesizer
most students only heard
ur um ahr ur but Sudir already
understood much of it.

Sudhir arrived at his new job
and warned the physics chair
Don’t assign the freshman physics students
to me; they will be so shocked
at my Indian speech that they
will never persevere.

These days he often talks
to the alley cats in Bengali.
They persevere.