Gulzaman's Son...

I reread a poem today after a long time that was in our first year undergrad English syllabus at IIT-KGP.....and that has made me nostalgic.(....enuf to write about it actually!)
The Course was titled "English for Communication" but I think it had less real utility for communication than as an eye opener's to a lot of diverse content.....
We did Girish Karnad's play "Tughlaq", some selected poems and Did we do any short stories?....I cannot recall with certainty.I better not claim the affirmative.
The poem in question today however is "Gulzaman's Son"
As I read it, I remember having asked our english professor- There were three of them who were teaching us the course together and I kinda forget who it was exactly....was it the effeminate frail old gentleman, was it the very composed middle aged fair Lady or the Young lady professor who looked like one of us except for her erudite manners and very thick glasses(she looked attractive to a lot of us though...).....and so as I was saying I remember asking one of them...why was the composition called a poem since a) It was a Story. b) Absolutely devoid of any rhyme (to me atleast) c) More Prose like than Poetry.
I was of the opinion that calling a piece of prose,Poetry just cause we are irreverent to the appropriate punctuation or through wanton new line spacing does not make much sense.
I think I still don't get the literary way of classifying things as prose and poetry but today when I reread the "Poem" it did seem much more fluid than prose (especially since I am reading Rushdie's Midnight's Children right now!!!:))
and I can't put my finger on it but I will take my chances to claim that there is a subtle metronome which for different readers will appear different I guess.
To end this piece I would like to leave a link to another poem that we covered
"Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori"