Thommo, KumKum, Talitha, and Soma
Ten readers recited verse by poets of six nationalities, three each from India and USA, and one each from Scotland, England, Palestine, and Chile. Only two (from Scotland and India) are contemporary poets, the rest belonged to the twentieth century, with one exception.
Sivaram, Gopa, and Zakia
Readers introduced poets of rare skill who are not widely known outside their circles; this contributed to the exhilaration of hearing novel voices.
Talitha, Soma, Bobby, Sunil, and Mathew
Here is the happy group at the end of the session. Bobby was behind the lens.
Sivaram, Joe, Soma, Zakia, KumKum, Talitha, Gopa, Thommo, Sunil, and Mathew
To participate vicariously in the recitations and discussions that took place on the once-in-a-century day, 11/11/2011, click below.
Kochi
Reading Group Poetry session on Nov 11, 2011
Attending: Sunil, Mathew, Joe, Sivaram, Zakia, Thommo , KumKum, Talitha, Soma, Bobby, Gopa
Absent:
Priya (priority for son's leaving), Verghese (yet to be seduced by
poetry)
The date for the next session to read the novel Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis was changed to Dec 2, 2011, to suit Talitha. The further dates are:
The date for the next session to read the novel Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis was changed to Dec 2, 2011, to suit Talitha. The further dates are:
Jan
13, 2012 Poetry
Feb
10, 2012 Tristram Shandy
Sunil
Sarojinidevi
Naidu was a great patriot, politician, orator and administrator, of all the
famous women of India, Mrs. Sarojinidevi Naidu's name is at the top.
Not only that, but she was truly one of the jewels of the world.
Being one of the most famous heroines of the 20th century, her
birthday is celebrated as "Women's Day."
She
was born on February 13, 1879 in Hyderabad. Her father, Dr. Aghornath
Chattopadhyaya, was the founder of Nizam College of Hyderabad and a
scientist. Her mother, Mrs. Varasundari, was a Bengali poetess.
Sarojinidevi inherited qualities from both her father and mother.
Young
Sarojini was a very bright and proud girl. Her father aspired for her
to become a mathematician or scientist, but she loved poetry from a
very early age. Once she was working on an algebra problem, and when
she couldn't find the solution she decided to take a break, and in
the same book she wrote her first inspired poetry. She got so
enthused by this that she wrote The
Lady of the Lake,
a poem 1300 lines long. When her father saw that she was more
interested in poetry than mathematics or science, he decided to
encourage her. With her father's support, she wrote the play Maher
Muneer
in the Persian language. Dr. Chattopadhyaya distributed some copies
among his friends and sent one copy to the Nawab of Hyderabad.
Reading a beautiful play written by a young girl, the Nizam was very
impressed. The college gave her a scholarship to study abroad. At the
age of 16 she got admitted to King's College of England. There she
met famous laureates of the time.
During
her stay in England, Sarojini met Dr. Govind Naidu from southern
India. After finishing her studies at the age of 19, she got married
to him during the time when inter-caste marriages were not allowed.
Her father was a progressive thinking person, and he did not care
what others said. Her marriage was a very happy one.
Her
major contribution was also in the field of poetry. Her poetry had
beautiful words that could also be sung. Soon she got recognition as
the "Bul Bule Hind" when her collection of poems was
published in 1905 under the title Golden Threshold. After that, she
published two other collections of poems--The Bird of Time and The
Broken Wings. In 1918, Feast of Youth was published. Later, The Magic
Tree, The Wizard Mask and A Treasury of Poems were published.
Mahashree Arvind, Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru were among
the thousands of admirers of her work. Her poems had English words,
but an Indian soul.
One
day she met Shri Gopal Krishna Gokhale. He told her to use her poetry
and her beautiful words to rejuvenate the spirit of Independence in
the hearts of villagers and set free Mother India.
Then
in 1916, she met Mahatma Gandhi, and totally directed her energy to
the fight for freedom. She would roam around the country like a
general of the army and pour enthusiasm among the hearts of Indians.
The independence of India became the heart and soul of her work. She
was responsible for awakening the women of India. She brought them
out of the kitchen. Travelling from state to state, she demanded the
rights of the women, and helped re-establish their self-esteem.
In
1925, she chaired the summit of Congress in Kanpur. In 1928, she went
to USA with the message of the non-violence movement from Gandhiji.
When in 1930, Gandhiji was arrested for a protest, she took the helm
of his movement. In 1931, she participated in the Round Table Summit,
along with Gandhiji and Pundit Malaviyaji. In 1942, she was arrested
during the "Quit India" protest and stayed in jail for 21
months with Gandhiji.
After
independence she became the Governor of Uttar Pradesh – the first
woman governor in India.
She
died on March 2, 1949.
(http://www.poemhunter.com/sarojini-naidu/biography/
)
Sunil
said the poem may sound remote and out of place today because we have
forgotten the freedom struggle. In the discussion that followed
someone said we are lucky that India did not have oil, for then many
more colonial wars would have taken place. At that time the
colonialists were in search of markets for their manufactured goods,
and sources for raw materials. Talitha said there was a lot of rhythm
and music in her poetry, written under the advice of Gokhale.
Sivaram, however found the language archaic. Joe agreed; he too found
that Indian poets writing in English in those days assumed the
cadences of poets writing in England a hundred years before.
Regarding
the poem Coromandel
Fishers,
Sunil sketched an image of Tamil fishermen balanced like ballet
artists on the narrow planks of their catamarans; if they gave a ride
to tourists and they fell off, the fishermen would dive in and rescue
them. The word catamaran, Thommo, noted, has a Tamil origin, from
kattu-maram,
meaning tied wood. KumKum imagined these fisher-folk as 'surfing'
long before the age of surf-boards. Sunil thought the children of
fishermen in Fort Kochi would not themselves take to the sea, for
it's unattractive work.
Mathew
Toru
Dutt is relatively unknown in India today, but she was a pioneer of
Indian writing in English. The
Indian
Council of Historical
Research lists her among the Makers
of Modern India. The only work she published in her brief life of 21
years is called A
Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields.
It is a book published by a press in Bhowanipur, Calcutta, being
translations into English of 100 French poems.
The
critic Edmund Gosse was by happenstance in the room of a publisher in
London when the postman brought a shabby book printed in Calcutta. He
remarks: “When poetry is as good as this it does not much matter
whether Rouveyre prints it upon Whatman paper, or whether it steals
to light in blurred type from some press in Bhowanipore.”
(http://female-ancestors.com/daughters/dutt.htm) You may read at this site a touching account of the life and death of Toru, and
her constant companion and loving sister, Aru, elder to her by
eighteen months.
The
journeys Dutt made in her short life presage other similar journeys
that later Indian writers would make; the way she and her creative
work stand at the confluence of languages and traditions is prescient
of how the Indian writer in English, not to speak of the Indian
writer in general, is almost always to be found at that confluence.
She was born in Bengal, educated in France and Cambridge, and
returned to Bengal to write at least three great poems, Our
Casuarina Tree,
Baugmaree
and Sita.
Toru
Dutt's sonnet Baugmaree
is perhaps the first artistically satisfying example of those texts
in Indian writing in English that occupy the space between
translation and transformation. Baugmaree, or Bagmari, is on the
outskirts of Kolkata; it is where Dutt's family had a country house.
In a climate in which most of Dutt's contemporaries and predecessors
were writing of historical figures or events, or turning to English
literary conventions for their models, Dutt takes a form - the sonnet
- that came to her from the English language and opens it on to a
vista such as the English language had not known before.
Consider the first seven lines of the sonnet Baugmaree. The list of colours - the variations of green - does not prepare us for the sudden intrusion of the auditory in the eighth line: Red, - red, and startling like a trumpet's sound. In its transition from one of the five senses to another, from the visual to the auditory, the analogy rehearses the poem's own act of translation, its movement from English to Baugmaree and back again. It also returns us to the 'startling sound' in the previous line, the word 'seemul', the local name for the silk cotton tree - the incorporation of the lovely local word in the frame of the English sonnet - 'startles' with its resonance. It is meant to disturb, disturb both the 'quiet pools' and the diction of the sonnet. It opens the way to further such usages in Indian writing in English.
Consider the first seven lines of the sonnet Baugmaree. The list of colours - the variations of green - does not prepare us for the sudden intrusion of the auditory in the eighth line: Red, - red, and startling like a trumpet's sound. In its transition from one of the five senses to another, from the visual to the auditory, the analogy rehearses the poem's own act of translation, its movement from English to Baugmaree and back again. It also returns us to the 'startling sound' in the previous line, the word 'seemul', the local name for the silk cotton tree - the incorporation of the lovely local word in the frame of the English sonnet - 'startles' with its resonance. It is meant to disturb, disturb both the 'quiet pools' and the diction of the sonnet. It opens the way to further such usages in Indian writing in English.
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, a poet writing a hundred years after Toru Dutt, says: “Is it possible Surrealism helped me to resolve the awful contradiction between the world which I wanted to write about, which was the world of dentists and chemist shops, and the language, English, I had to write in? How does one write about an uncle in a wheelchair in the language of skylarks and nightingales? Surrealism… provided the answer, or so it appears in hindsight. It's almost as though I had said to myself that since I can't write about these things in English, let me try doing it in French, so to speak.' Thus, too, for the earlier poet, the incursion of 'seemul' into the 'language of skylarks and nightingales' is, for her, and all of us, an important one; and the odd simile, composed of dissimilar elements, red, and startling like a trumpet's sound, reminds us of the simultaneous coming together and breaking apart of languages that makes that incursion possible. With Baugmaree begins a journey, which many others since have undertaken.” (Amit Chaudhuri. See http://www.rigzin.freeservers.com/amit.htm )
Baugmaree,
near Manicktala in Calcutta, was where Toru and Aru her elder sister
spent hours happily gardening. Toru learnt French well enough to be
at home writing in the language. Her writing seems fresh and
unsentimental today, and worthy of recitation alongside contemporary
poets. Her achievement was to bypass the tradition of Shelley and
Wordsworth, and assume the voice of the golden age of French poetry
of the nineteenth century. Incidentally, Toru Dutt had a famous
cousin, Romesh Chunder Dutt, civil servant, economist, and creative
writer who translated Indian epics into couplets.
Joe remarked that the first poem is in pentameter. Mathew replied it is a sonnet, though not in the Elizabethan or the Italian rhyme scheme. Bobby mentioned a Kurosawa film in which two old people are sitting silently facing each other, and a bystander asks what they are up to, and one of them replies that they are exchanging old stories.
Joe remarked that the first poem is in pentameter. Mathew replied it is a sonnet, though not in the Elizabethan or the Italian rhyme scheme. Bobby mentioned a Kurosawa film in which two old people are sitting silently facing each other, and a bystander asks what they are up to, and one of them replies that they are exchanging old stories.
For
further reference, see:
Joe
Don
Paterson
is a contemporary poet, born in 1963. Joe was not aware of his poetry,
although Paterson has won practically every prize in the British poetry
world. He is Scottish, born in Dundee, and is on the faculty of the
English Department at Scotland's famous university, St. Andrews. He
is also a guitar player and appears regularly in a band playing jazz.
He is married and lives with his partner, a novelist called Nora
Chassler, three step-children, and twin sons, Jamie and Russell, one
of whom was born with a neurological handicap.
His
work has received the Forward Poetry Prize several times (Best First
Collection, Best Collection, Best Poem) and the Whitbread Poetry
Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, and the T. S. Eliot Prize,
twice. He has published five volumes of poetry so far, a book of
aphorisms, a technical manual on poetry, and a gloss for everyman on
Shakespeare's sonnets.
Quotes
from an interview:
- “the poem is never pre-determined, and I would be wary of any poet who writes that way. I doubt I’d want to read them. As I’ve said, I write to find out what it is I think, or to find out something I haven’t thought."
- Poets understand .... that to express something true about the world, style and brevity are two of the principal means ...
- I don’t think our lives need redeeming. It’s a Christian word, and we have no need for it. We weren’t sinful in the first place. Nothing was broken, and nothing needs fixing
- poetic language has two functions; to make things clear and distinct where they weren’t, and to join them back up again when they were broken apart. It’s a natural function of language.
- Metre’s a bit of a lost art in some quarters,
- To provoke a feeling requires that you risk sentimentality, which I think you have to; it sounds like a pretty uncool and unfashionable risk, compared with doing something crazy with the syntax; or replacing all the nouns with the word next to them in the dictionary, or whatever - but the worst that can happen there is that you’ll annoy the reader.
- Imagination is how we correct reality for error
(although,
being trained in science, I would characterise imagination as the
leap by which we overcome an error of current thinking to grasp at
the truth that lies beyond, and always will).
Sivaram
Sivaram
chose Harold Pinter, the playwright, to sample his poetry. Pinter wrote
poetry throughout his life, and Sivaram was particularly taken by the
transparent expressions of love in the short poems he addressed to
his second wife and the love of his life, Antonia Fraser, the
well-known historical fiction novelist. His first marriage was not a
happy one, but when he met Antonia Fraser it was love from the
beginning, although she was married to an MP and had borne him six
children. She wrote in her biography of Pinter (Must
You Go?)
that the day she confessed the affair to her husband, Pinter came
over and the two men had a drink and “discussed cricket at length,
then the West Indies, then Proust.” Lady Antonia and Pinter married
in 1980.
Sivaram
mentioned Pinter's love for cricket, and his anti-American stance
delivered in a scathing lecture videotaped for the Nobel Lecture (he
was too sick to attend). He was a man of moods and had his demons of
depression, and his wit was acerbic; which makes the contrast with
his simply addressed avowals of love all the more delightful: his
last poem before he died of cancer of the esophagus (he was a heavy
smoker) begins: I shall
miss you so much when I’m dead
and
ends
My
everlasting bride
Remember
that when I am dead
You
are forever alive in my heart and my head.
Joe
thought the lesson from Pinter's verse is that it can unite people,
never mind the quality of the verse, provided it is addressed with
much feeling.
Gopa
Although Gopa did not read this time, seeking to get a feel for the poetry sessions, we hope very much she will find some fine poetry to recite for us at the next session on Jan 13. People reminded her of Thommo's baptism in poetry. He too was not a poetry fan, when he joined, being a writer focused on prose, but he decided to take the plunge at his first poetry session by reciting the lyrics of a song by a group he liked; the ballad was called Heavy Horses, if memory serves. Here:
Although Gopa did not read this time, seeking to get a feel for the poetry sessions, we hope very much she will find some fine poetry to recite for us at the next session on Jan 13. People reminded her of Thommo's baptism in poetry. He too was not a poetry fan, when he joined, being a writer focused on prose, but he decided to take the plunge at his first poetry session by reciting the lyrics of a song by a group he liked; the ballad was called Heavy Horses, if memory serves. Here:
Ever
since Thommo has been bringing us novel poets, and poetic novels to
read, such as the next one, Lucky
Jim.
Zakia
Mahmoud
Darwish was the 2001 winner of the Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom.
He is considered one of the foremost poets of the Arab world. His
readings in Arab capitals are attended by thousands—sometimes tens
of thousands—from all sectors of the society. The critic Hassan
Khader calls Darwish a poet of love. Darwish’s early poetry was
lyrical; it later evolved to address more symbolic and abstract
themes. Khader credits Darwish for saving Arabic lyrical poetry from
the stagnation it fell into in the ‘60s by taking it beyond
immediate political concerns into more metaphysical subjects. His
technical innovations affected both the form and the substance of
this popular form of poetry. In Darwish’s poems private and public
concerns are carefully balanced and expressed through his own poetic
vocabulary and imagery. This has had a profound influence on
generations of poets throughout the Arab world.
Here is an
interview with Mahmoud Darwish:
Zakia said Darwish
is accepted as the Palestinian national poet. The poem she read (I
Come From There) is a metaphor for a lost Eden, a homeland,
Al-watan in Arabic. Darwish moved to Haifa, and then joined
the PLO. He was allowed to enter Ramallah in 1995. He was married
twice. He wrote 30 volumes of poetry, and admired the Jewish poet
Yehuda Amichai. Darwish wrote in Arabic and in English.
Zakia said even
now after decades of occupation there is no settlement. Only 50,000
illegal settlements, replied Joe, exaggerating a bit. Sivaram added
that that someone (the poet?) said “You Americans will never
understand what it is to be free.” Sunil mentioned a letter of
Eisenhower in connection with Palestine. The British, as usual, with
their propensity to draw straight lines dividing countries in the
Middle East and Africa, were partly responsible for creating the
problem. In former times, Thommo said, Palestine had a large
Christian population and revolutionaries like George Habash were PLO
fighters. Today the land has only a small Christian population
remaining, for people have left to escape the inhuman conditions
under which Israel continues to keep the Palestinians as prisoners in
their own land. Sivaram cited the book From the Holy Mountain: A
Journey among the Christians of the Middle East by William
Dalrymple as a touching story, laying out the tragedy of a dying
civilisation of Christians in the Middle East.
Thommo
Pablo
Neruda (1904
– 1973) was the pen name assumed by the Chilean poet, diplomat and
politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. The name he chose
belonged to the Czech poet Jan Neruda. He travelled widely in India.
One of his famous works is a group of poems titled Veinte
poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (20 love poems and a song
of despair)
in which he pours out his heart in emotionally charged love poetry.
Being a confirmed leftist, he lent his support to Allende for the
Presidency of Chile, and was himself made Ambassador to France for
two years. In 1971, Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize for his
poetry. For more see:KumKum
Sylvia Plath was
born in Massachusetts in 1932 and committed suicide in London in
1963. This talented, multifaceted young woman struggled with
depression all through her adult life. Her tumultuous romance and
marriage to dashing British poet, Ted Hughes, did not assuage her
mental disorder. Initially, the two shared a fairytale life. They had
two children. But, very soon Hughes sought Romance and love outside
his marriage. These affairs wreaked havoc on Sylvia’s delicate
condition.
To
elucidate: in 1963 Ted Hughes got seriously involved with Assia
Wevill. Assia was the wife of the poet David Wevill, common friends
of theirs. Hughes was living apart from his wife and their two
children at the time. This was the period when Sylvia suffered the
most; she was also at her creative best. Her pain comes through in a
series of very personal poems. These are her best, and belong to the
category of “Confessional Poetry.” After her death Ted Hughes
edited and published Plath's poems in a book titled, Ariel.
I
will read two of my favourite poems by Sylvia Plath, both composed in
the dark days of her life, and bearing the imprint of a soul
unburdening itself. KumKum said that critics have taken the mushroom
of the poem Mushroom to stand for her own demon of acute depression
that would overcome her at times. Talitha thought the lines
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
Means
that people without rights will ultimately inherit the earth as they
grow and multiply like mushrooms silently overnight. It could stand
also for the underdog coming up, said Mathew. KumKum noted that
immigrants took up the message as a hope for them, and spread this
poem as being about themselves, ultimately destined to win their
rights.
The
second poem recited, called Pheasant,
is a metaphor for the wilting love between Ted Hughes and
Sylvia Plath, said KumKum. Whether this is the rumination of an academic or has
been vouched by Sylvia, we do not know. Talitha, at any rate saw this
poem as a detailed description of pheasants, evoking their loveliness
singly or in a flock. Joe remarked on the verb 'unclaps' used in the
line about a pheasant coming to rest in a tree:
It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud,
It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud,
Settles
in the elm, and is easy.
Joe could not find 'unclaps' in any dictionary and promised to look it up in the
great OED. There it is listed as
Obs. trans. To open up
Obs. trans. To open up
with
the only example:
1621
T. W. tr. S. Goulart Wise
Vieillard
A
4 b, My fingers did euen itch to set pen to paper, and to vnclappe
so good a Worke.
Talitha
Louis
Untermeyer was the author, editor or compiler, and translator of more
than one hundred books for readers of all ages. He will be best
remembered as a prolific anthologist. "What most of us don't
realize is that everyone loves poetry," he was quoted as saying.
Untermeyer
developed his taste for literature while still a child. His mother
had read aloud to him from a variety of sources, including the epic
poems. In his maturity he encouraged the spirit of experiment that
characterized the decade, saying, "it is the non-conformers, the
innovators in art, science, technology, and human relations who,
misunderstood and ridiculed in their own times, have shaped our
world."
Friendships
with Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Arthur Miller, and other literary
figures provided him with material for books. Bygones
provides his reflections on the four women who were his wives. Jean
Starr moved to Vienna with Untermeyer after he became a full-time
writer; Virginia Moore was his wife for about a year; Esther Antin, a
lawyer he met in Toledo, Ohio, married him in 1933; fifteen years
later, he married Bryna Ivens, with whom he edited a dozen books for
children.
In
his later years, Untermeyer, like Frost, had a deep appreciation for
country life.
The
first poem The Portrait of a Machine, accurately conveys the sense of
machines with their huge impersonal attributes taking over and man
becoming subject to them, by an inversion:
Its
master's bread and laughs to see this great
Lord of the earth, who rules but cannot learn,
Become the slave of what his slaves create.
Lord of the earth, who rules but cannot learn,
Become the slave of what his slaves create.
The
second poem renders contrasts the malice of talking as it is
practiced by unthinking folk, with the gentle discourse and innocent
demeanor he experienced in his father’s talk. You can discern the
admiration the son must have had for his father’s qualities, which
he would have valued and imitated.
Soma
Born
in 1940, Gieve
Patel is
an important presence in the history of modern Indian poetry in
English. He is a poet, playwright and painter, as well as a doctor by
profession, practicing in Mumbai. He has written three books of
poetry (Poems,
How
Do You Withstand, Body
and Mirrored
Mirroring);
three plays (Princes,
Savaksa
and Mr
Behram);
and held several exhibitions of his paintings in India and abroad. He
lives in Mumbai.
Patel
describes himself as “a profane monk” whose poetry reveals “a
slightly sick concern with the body”. This preoccupation is evident
in Patel’s poetic terrain (evoked time and again with horrified but
rapt fascination): a world of nerve endings and viscera, ragged fibre
and vein, gnarled root and leprous hide. The tone is frequently flat,
dispassionate, even offhand, wary of any attempt to ennoble, prettify
or sentimentalise the subject matter. The existential questions –
and they are never far away in Patel’s work – are not presented
as airy abstractions; they emerge thickly, haltingly, from the
glutinous dough of corporeality that is the focus of what seems to be
the gaze of a committed forensic pathologist.Patel makes no gestures at discerning harmony or resolution in the “chorale” that rises daily “from the world’s forsaken cellars”. But in the relentless feverish probing of the darkest areas of human pain and desolation, he acknowledges, particularly in the later work, the emergence of something else. God may be too grand a word for it.
To
most people Gieve Patel is synonymous with the poem On Killing a
Tree. “It is the one poem that people remember,” he admits
with a sudden smile. “Whenever I travel abroad, people I don’t
know at all come up to me and tell me that they had studied it in
school.”
The
poem deals with an incident that happened when he was in the first
year of medical school in Mumbai many years ago. An old peepul tree
had sheltered a host of creatures, both wild and tame, under its
branches. One day, when he came to school, he found that it had been
chopped down. Dr Patel described it in the course of a reading at The
School KFI, run by the Krishnamurti Foundation India in Chennai.
“The
poem just came out without much effort. Most of it just fell into
place naturally. And though it’s about the beautiful tree that I
missed seeing in its usual place, in some ways the poem suggests, I
think, that a tree is not very different from a human life.”
As
a practising doctor, images of the human body are never far from his
compendium, whether in paintings or poetry. And it’s typical of a
Gieve Patel poem that he should see the bark of the tree as
“leprous”. It’s as if there’s an equal amount of delight and
revulsion with the physical aspects of the world around him.
Bobby
A.
K. Ramanujan, born in Mysore, India in 1929, came to the U.S. in
1959, where he remained until his death in Chicago on July 13, 1993 .
Not only was Ramanujan a transnational figure, but he was also a
trans-disciplinary scholar, working as a poet, translator, linguist,
and folklorist. Although he wrote primarily in English, he was fluent
in both Kannada, the common public language of Mysore, and Tamil, the
language of his family, as well.
Ramanujan
received his BA and MA in English language and literature from the
University of Mysore. He then spent some time teaching at several
universities in South India before getting a graduate diploma in
theoretical linguistics from Deccan University in Poona in 1958. The
following year, he went to Indiana University where he got a Ph.D. in
linguistics in 1963.
In
1962, he became an assistant professor at the University of Chicago,
where he was affiliated throughout the rest of his career. However,
he did teach at several other U.S. universities at times, including
Harvard, University of Wisconsin, University of Michigan, University
of California at Berkeley, and Carlton College. At the University of
Chicago, Ramanujan was instrumental in shaping the South Asian
Studies program. He worked in the departments of South Asian
Languages and Civilizations, Linguistics, and with the Committee on
Social Thought. In 1976, the government of India awarded him the
honorific title Padma
Sri,
and in 1983, he was given the MacArthur Prize Fellowship (Shulman,
1994).
A
Kannada short story of A.K. Ramanujan was discovered in a stack of
papers by his wife, Molly A. Daniels-Ramanujan, and given to
playwright-friend Girish Karnad a few years after Ramanujan’s death
in 1993. The papers contain a few humour pieces, poems and notes for
a novel. They remained unpublished primarily because they were works
in progress. Ramanujan was known to be meticulous with his drafts and
spoke of revising them over and over again. Ramanujan did a fair
amount of creative writing in Kannada. He had published three
anthologies of poems, one novel, four short stories, two radio plays,
a few essays and a tiny volume on proverbs.
In
the poem Birthdays written a
year before he died he is pondering birth and death and draws an
analogy between the kicking of a baby as it comes out of the mother's
womb and the death throes of a person. He asks:
but
death? Is it a dispersal
of gathered energies
back into their elements,
earth, air, water and fire,
of gathered energies
back into their elements,
earth, air, water and fire,
Ramanujan
is dealing with the riddles of life, which are too difficult to solve
in the space of a short poem, but 43 lines
is quite adequate to state one more riddle.
The
Poems
Sunil
Sarojini Naidu 2 poems
To India
O YOUNG through all thy immemorial years!
Rise, Mother, rise, regenerate from thy gloom,
And, like a bride high-mated with the spheres,
Beget new glories from thine ageless womb!
The nations that in fettered darkness weep
Crave thee to lead them where great mornings break . . . .
Mother, O Mother, wherefore dost thou sleep?
Arise and answer for thy children's sake!
Thy Future calls thee with a manifold sound
To crescent honours, splendours, victories vast;
Waken, O slumbering Mother and be crowned,
Who once wert empress of the sovereign Past.
Sarojini Naidu 2 poems
To India
O YOUNG through all thy immemorial years!
Rise, Mother, rise, regenerate from thy gloom,
And, like a bride high-mated with the spheres,
Beget new glories from thine ageless womb!
The nations that in fettered darkness weep
Crave thee to lead them where great mornings break . . . .
Mother, O Mother, wherefore dost thou sleep?
Arise and answer for thy children's sake!
Thy Future calls thee with a manifold sound
To crescent honours, splendours, victories vast;
Waken, O slumbering Mother and be crowned,
Who once wert empress of the sovereign Past.
Coromandel
Fishers
Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light,
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night.
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free,
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea!
Rise, brothers, rise; the wakening skies pray to the morning light,
The wind lies asleep in the arms of the dawn like a child that has cried all night.
Come, let us gather our nets from the shore and set our catamarans free,
To capture the leaping wealth of the tide, for we are the kings of the sea!
No
longer delay, let us hasten away in the track of the sea gull's
call,
The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother, the waves are our comrades all.
What though we toss at the fall of the sun where the hand of the sea-god drives?
He who holds the storm by the hair, will hide in his breast our lives.
The sea is our mother, the cloud is our brother, the waves are our comrades all.
What though we toss at the fall of the sun where the hand of the sea-god drives?
He who holds the storm by the hair, will hide in his breast our lives.
Sweet
is the shade of the cocoanut glade, and the scent of the mango
grove,
And sweet are the sands at the full o' the moon with the sound of the voices we love;
But sweeter, O brothers, the kiss of the spray and the dance of the wild foam's glee;
Row, brothers, row to the edge of the verge, where the low sky mates with the sea.
And sweet are the sands at the full o' the moon with the sound of the voices we love;
But sweeter, O brothers, the kiss of the spray and the dance of the wild foam's glee;
Row, brothers, row to the edge of the verge, where the low sky mates with the sea.
Mathew
2
poems by Toru Dutt
Baugmaree
A sea of foliage girds our garden round,
But not a sea of dull unvaried green,
Sharp contrasts of all colours here are seen;
The light-green graceful tamarinds abound
Amid the mangoe clumps of green profound,
And palms arise, like pillars gray, between;
And o'er the quiet pools the seemuls lean,
Red,--red, and startling like a trumpet's sound.
But nothing can be lovelier than the ranges
Of bamboos to the eastward, when the moon
Looks through their gaps, and the white lotus changes
Into a cup of silver. One might swoon
Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze
On a primeval Eden, in amaze.
A sea of foliage girds our garden round,
But not a sea of dull unvaried green,
Sharp contrasts of all colours here are seen;
The light-green graceful tamarinds abound
Amid the mangoe clumps of green profound,
And palms arise, like pillars gray, between;
And o'er the quiet pools the seemuls lean,
Red,--red, and startling like a trumpet's sound.
But nothing can be lovelier than the ranges
Of bamboos to the eastward, when the moon
Looks through their gaps, and the white lotus changes
Into a cup of silver. One might swoon
Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze
On a primeval Eden, in amaze.
The
Tree Of Life
Broad daylight, with a sense of weariness!
Mine eyes were closed, but I was not asleep,
My hand was in my father's, and I felt
His presence near me. Thus we often past
In silence, hour by hour. What was the need
Of interchanging words when every thought
That in our hearts arose, was known to each,
And every pulse kept time? Suddenly there shone
A strange light, and the scene as sudden changed.
I was awake:--It was an open plain
Illimitable,--stretching, stretching--oh, so far!
And o'er it that strange light,--a glorious light
Like that the stars shed over fields of snow
In a clear, cloudless, frosty winter night,
Only intenser in its brilliance calm.
And in the midst of that vast plain, I saw,
For I was wide awake,--it was no dream,
A tree with spreading branches and with leaves
Of divers kinds,--dead silver and live gold,
Shimmering in radiance that no words may tell!
Beside the tree an Angel stood; he plucked
A few small sprays, and bound them round my head.
Oh, the delicious touch of those strange leaves!
No longer throbbed my brows, no more I felt
The fever in my limbs--"And oh," I cried,
"Bind too my father's forehead with these leaves."
One leaf the Angel took and therewith touched
His forehead, and then gently whispered "Nay!"
Never, oh never had I seen a face
More beautiful than that Angel's, or more full
Of holy pity and of love divine.
Wondering I looked awhile,--then, all at once
Opened my tear-dimmed eyes--When lo! the light
Was gone--the light as of the stars when snow
Lies deep upon the ground. No more, no more,
Was seen the Angel's face. I only found
My father watching patient by my bed,
And holding in his own, close-prest, my hand.
Broad daylight, with a sense of weariness!
Mine eyes were closed, but I was not asleep,
My hand was in my father's, and I felt
His presence near me. Thus we often past
In silence, hour by hour. What was the need
Of interchanging words when every thought
That in our hearts arose, was known to each,
And every pulse kept time? Suddenly there shone
A strange light, and the scene as sudden changed.
I was awake:--It was an open plain
Illimitable,--stretching, stretching--oh, so far!
And o'er it that strange light,--a glorious light
Like that the stars shed over fields of snow
In a clear, cloudless, frosty winter night,
Only intenser in its brilliance calm.
And in the midst of that vast plain, I saw,
For I was wide awake,--it was no dream,
A tree with spreading branches and with leaves
Of divers kinds,--dead silver and live gold,
Shimmering in radiance that no words may tell!
Beside the tree an Angel stood; he plucked
A few small sprays, and bound them round my head.
Oh, the delicious touch of those strange leaves!
No longer throbbed my brows, no more I felt
The fever in my limbs--"And oh," I cried,
"Bind too my father's forehead with these leaves."
One leaf the Angel took and therewith touched
His forehead, and then gently whispered "Nay!"
Never, oh never had I seen a face
More beautiful than that Angel's, or more full
Of holy pity and of love divine.
Wondering I looked awhile,--then, all at once
Opened my tear-dimmed eyes--When lo! the light
Was gone--the light as of the stars when snow
Lies deep upon the ground. No more, no more,
Was seen the Angel's face. I only found
My father watching patient by my bed,
And holding in his own, close-prest, my hand.
Joe
Don Paterson 2 poems
Two Trees
one morning, don miguel got out of bed
with one idea rooted in his head:
to graft his orange to his lemon tree.
It took him the whole day to work them free,
lay open their sides, and lash them tight.
For twelve months, from the shame or from the fright
they put forth nothing; but one day there appeared
two lights in the dark leaves. Over the years
the limbs would get themselves so tangled up
each bough looked like it gave a double crop,
and not one kid in the village didn’t know
the magic tree in Miguel’s patio.
Don Paterson 2 poems
Two Trees
one morning, don miguel got out of bed
with one idea rooted in his head:
to graft his orange to his lemon tree.
It took him the whole day to work them free,
lay open their sides, and lash them tight.
For twelve months, from the shame or from the fright
they put forth nothing; but one day there appeared
two lights in the dark leaves. Over the years
the limbs would get themselves so tangled up
each bough looked like it gave a double crop,
and not one kid in the village didn’t know
the magic tree in Miguel’s patio.
The
man who bought the house had had no dream
so who can say what dark malicious whim
led him to take his axe and split the bole
along its fused seam, then dig two holes.
And no, they did not die from solitude;
nor did their branches bear a sterile fruit;
nor did their unhealed flanks weep every spring
for those four yards that lost them everything
as each strained on its shackled root to face
the other’s empty, intricate embrace.
They were trees, and trees don’t weep or ache or shout.
And trees are all this poem is about.
so who can say what dark malicious whim
led him to take his axe and split the bole
along its fused seam, then dig two holes.
And no, they did not die from solitude;
nor did their branches bear a sterile fruit;
nor did their unhealed flanks weep every spring
for those four yards that lost them everything
as each strained on its shackled root to face
the other’s empty, intricate embrace.
They were trees, and trees don’t weep or ache or shout.
And trees are all this poem is about.
The
Circle
for
Jamie
(Jamie is the twin, born with a tremor, because he didn't get oxygen at his difficult birth)
My boy is painting outer space,
and steadies his brush-rip to trace
the comets, planets, moon and sun
and all the circuitry they run
(Jamie is the twin, born with a tremor, because he didn't get oxygen at his difficult birth)
My boy is painting outer space,
and steadies his brush-rip to trace
the comets, planets, moon and sun
and all the circuitry they run
in
one great heavenly design.
But when he tries to close the line
he draws around his upturned cup,
his hand shakes, and he screws it up.
But when he tries to close the line
he draws around his upturned cup,
his hand shakes, and he screws it up.
The
shake’s as old as he is, all
(thank god) his body can recall
of that hour when, one inch from home,
we couldn't get the air to him;
(thank god) his body can recall
of that hour when, one inch from home,
we couldn't get the air to him;
and
though today he’s all the earth
and sky for breathing-space and breath
the whole damn troposphere can’t cure
the flutter in his signature.
and sky for breathing-space and breath
the whole damn troposphere can’t cure
the flutter in his signature.
But
Jamie, nothing’s what we meant.
The dream is taxed. We all resent
the quarter bled off by the dark
between the bowstring and the mark
The dream is taxed. We all resent
the quarter bled off by the dark
between the bowstring and the mark
and
trust to Krishna or to fate
to keep our arrows halfway straight.
But the target also draws our aim –
our will and nature's are the same;
to keep our arrows halfway straight.
But the target also draws our aim –
our will and nature's are the same;
we
are its living word, and not
a book it wrote and then forgot,
its fourteen-billion-year-old song
inscribed in both out right and wrong —
a book it wrote and then forgot,
its fourteen-billion-year-old song
inscribed in both out right and wrong —
so
even when you rage and moan
and bring your fist down like a stone
on your spoiled work and useless kit,
you just can’t help but broadcast it:
and bring your fist down like a stone
on your spoiled work and useless kit,
you just can’t help but broadcast it:
look
at the little avatar
of your muddy water-jar
filling with the perfect ring
singing under everything.
of your muddy water-jar
filling with the perfect ring
singing under everything.
Sivaram
To
My Wife
I was dead and now I live
You took my hand
I blindly died
You took my hand
You watched me die
And found my life
You were my life
When I was dead
You are my life
And so I live
(June 2004)
I was dead and now I live
You took my hand
I blindly died
You took my hand
You watched me die
And found my life
You were my life
When I was dead
You are my life
And so I live
(June 2004)
It
Is Here
(for
A)
What
sound was that?
I
turn away, into the shaking room.
What
was that sound that came in on the dark?
What
is this maze of light it leaves us in?
What
is this stance we take,
To
turn away and then turn back?
What
did we hear?
It
was the breath we took when we first met.
Listen.
It is here.
Untitled
I know the place
It is true
Everything we do
Corrects the space
Between Death and me
And you.
PARIS
I know the place
It is true
Everything we do
Corrects the space
Between Death and me
And you.
PARIS
The
curtain white in folds,
She
walks two steps and turns,
The
curtain still, the light
Staggers
in her eyes.
The
lamps are golden.
Afternoon
leans, silently.
She
dances in my life.
The
white day burns.
To A
To A
I
shall miss you so much when I’m dead
The
loveliest of smiles
The softness of your body in our bed
The softness of your body in our bed
My
everlasting bride
Remember
that when I am dead
You
are forever alive in my heart and my head
Zakia
a poem by Mahmoud Darwish
I Come From There
a poem by Mahmoud Darwish
I Come From There
I come from there
and I have memories
Born as mortals
are, I have a mother
And a house with
many windows,
I have brothers,
friends,
And a prison cell
with a cold window.
Mine is the wave,
snatched by sea-gulls,
I have my own
view,
And an extra blade
of grass.
Mine is the moon
at the far edge of the words,
And the bounty of
birds,
And the immortal
olive tree.
I walked this land
before the swords
Turned its living
body into a laden table.
I come from there.
I render the sky unto her mother
When the sky weeps
for her mother.
And I weep to make
myself known
To a returning
cloud.
I learnt all the
words worthy of the court of blood
So that I could
break the rule.
I learnt all the
words and broke them up
To make a single
word: Homeland.....
Thommo
a poem by Pablo Neruda
If You Forget Me
a poem by Pablo Neruda
If You Forget Me
I
want you to know
one
thing.
You
know how this is:
if
I look
at
the crystal moon, at the red branch
of
the slow autumn at my window,
if
I touch
near
the fire
the
impalpable ash
or
the wrinkled body of the log,
everything
carries me to you,
as
if everything that exists,
aromas,
light, metals,
were
little boats
that
sail
toward
those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well,
now,
if
little by little you stop loving me
I
shall stop loving you little by little.
If
suddenly
you
forget me
do
not look for me,
for
I shall already have forgotten you.
If
you think it long and mad,
the
wind of banners
that
passes through my life,
and
you decide
to
leave me at the shore
of
the heart where I have roots,
remember
that
on that day,
at
that hour,
I
shall lift my arms
and
my roots will set off
to
seek another land.
But
if
each day,
each
hour,
you
feel that you are destined for me
with
implacable sweetness,
if
each day a flower
climbs
up to your lips to seek me,
ah
my love, ah my own,
in
me all that fire is repeated,
in
me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my
love feeds on your love, beloved,
and
as long as you live it will be in your arms
without
leaving mine.
In
Spanish
Si
Tu Me Olvidas
Quiero que sepas
una cosa.
Tú sabes cómo es esto:
si miro
la luna de cristal, la rama roja
del lento otoño en mi ventana,
si toco
junto al fuego
la impalpable ceniza
o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña,
todo me lleva a ti,
como si todo lo que existe:
aromas, luz, metales,
fueran pequeños barcos que navegan
hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan.
Ahora bien,
si poco a poco dejas de quererme
dejaré de quererte poco a poco.
Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habré olvidado.
Si consideras largo y loco
el viento de banderas
que pasa por mi vida
y te decides
a dejarme a la orilla
del corazón en que tengo raíces,
piensa
que en esa día,
a esa hora
levantaré los brazos
y saldrán mis raíces
a buscar otra tierra.
Pero
si cada día,
cada hora,
sientes que a mí estás destinada
con dulzura implacable,
si cada día sube
una flor a tus labios a buscarme,
ay amor mío, ay mía,
en mí todo ese fuego se repite,
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida,
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada,
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos
sin salir de los míos.
Quiero que sepas
una cosa.
Tú sabes cómo es esto:
si miro
la luna de cristal, la rama roja
del lento otoño en mi ventana,
si toco
junto al fuego
la impalpable ceniza
o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña,
todo me lleva a ti,
como si todo lo que existe:
aromas, luz, metales,
fueran pequeños barcos que navegan
hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan.
Ahora bien,
si poco a poco dejas de quererme
dejaré de quererte poco a poco.
Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habré olvidado.
Si consideras largo y loco
el viento de banderas
que pasa por mi vida
y te decides
a dejarme a la orilla
del corazón en que tengo raíces,
piensa
que en esa día,
a esa hora
levantaré los brazos
y saldrán mis raíces
a buscar otra tierra.
Pero
si cada día,
cada hora,
sientes que a mí estás destinada
con dulzura implacable,
si cada día sube
una flor a tus labios a buscarme,
ay amor mío, ay mía,
en mí todo ese fuego se repite,
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida,
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada,
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos
sin salir de los míos.
KumKum
Sylvia Plath 2 poems
Sylvia Plath 2 poems
Mushroom
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our
noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees
us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist
on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the
paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly
voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or
nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we
are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and
shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by
morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
Pheasant
You said you would kill it this morning.
Do not kill it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing
You said you would kill it this morning.
Do not kill it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing
Through the uncut
grass on the elm's hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all.
I am not mystical:
it isn't
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element.
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element.
That gives it a
kingliness, a right.
The print of its big foot last winter,
The trail-track, on the snow in our court
The print of its big foot last winter,
The trail-track, on the snow in our court
The wonder of it,
in that pallor,
Through crosshatch of sparrow and starling.
Is it its rareness, then? It is rare.
Through crosshatch of sparrow and starling.
Is it its rareness, then? It is rare.
But a dozen would
be worth having,
A hundred, on that hill--green and red,
Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing!
A hundred, on that hill--green and red,
Crossing and recrossing: a fine thing!
It is such a good
shape, so vivid.
It's a little cornucopia.
It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud,
It's a little cornucopia.
It unclaps, brown as a leaf, and loud,
Settles in the
elm, and is easy.
It was sunning in the narcissi.
I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be.
It was sunning in the narcissi.
I trespass stupidly. Let be, let be.
Talitha
Louis Untermeyer 2 poems
Louis Untermeyer 2 poems
Portrait
of a Machine
What
nudity as beautiful as this
Obedient monster purring at this toil;
Those naked iron muscles dripping oil,
And the sure-fingered rods that never miss?
This long and shining flank of metal is
Magic that greasy labour cannot spoil;
While this vast engine that could rend the soil
Conceals its fury with a gentle hiss.
It does not vent its loathing, it does not turn
Upon its makers with destroying hate.
It bears a deeper malice; lives to earn
Its master's bread and laughs to see this great
Lord of the earth, who rules but cannot learn,
Become the slave of what his slaves create.
Obedient monster purring at this toil;
Those naked iron muscles dripping oil,
And the sure-fingered rods that never miss?
This long and shining flank of metal is
Magic that greasy labour cannot spoil;
While this vast engine that could rend the soil
Conceals its fury with a gentle hiss.
It does not vent its loathing, it does not turn
Upon its makers with destroying hate.
It bears a deeper malice; lives to earn
Its master's bread and laughs to see this great
Lord of the earth, who rules but cannot learn,
Become the slave of what his slaves create.
A
Man
(For
My Father)
I
listened to them talking, talking,
That tableful of keen and clever folk,
Sputtering . . . followed by a pale and balking
Sort of flash whenever some one spoke;
Like musty fireworks or a pointless joke,
Followed by a pointless, musty laughter. Then
Without a pause, the sputtering once again . . .
The air was thick with epigrams and smoke;
And underneath it all
It seemed that furtive things began to crawl,
Hissing and striking in the dark,
Aiming at no particular mark,
And careless whom they hurt.
The petty jealousies, the smiling hates
Shot forth their venom as they passed the plates,
And hissed and struck again, aroused, alert;
Using their feeble smartness as a screen
To shield their poisonous stabbing, to divert
From what was cowardly and black and mean.
That tableful of keen and clever folk,
Sputtering . . . followed by a pale and balking
Sort of flash whenever some one spoke;
Like musty fireworks or a pointless joke,
Followed by a pointless, musty laughter. Then
Without a pause, the sputtering once again . . .
The air was thick with epigrams and smoke;
And underneath it all
It seemed that furtive things began to crawl,
Hissing and striking in the dark,
Aiming at no particular mark,
And careless whom they hurt.
The petty jealousies, the smiling hates
Shot forth their venom as they passed the plates,
And hissed and struck again, aroused, alert;
Using their feeble smartness as a screen
To shield their poisonous stabbing, to divert
From what was cowardly and black and mean.
Then
I thought of you,
Your gentle soul,
Your large and quiet kindness;
Ready to caution and console,
And, with an almost blindness
To what was mean and low.
Baseness you never knew;
You could not think that falsehood was untrue,
Nor that deceit would ever dare betray you.
You even trusted treachery; and so,
Guileless, what guile or evil could dismay you?
You were for counsels rather than commands.
Your sweetness was your strength, your strength a sweetness
That drew all men, and made reluctant hands
Rest long upon your shoulder.
Firm, but never proud,
You walked your sixty years as through a crowd
Of friends who loved to feel your warmth, and who
Knowing that warmth, knew you.
Even the casual beholder
Could see your fresh and generous completeness,
Like dawn in a deep forest, growing and shining through.
Such faith has soothed and armed you. It has smiled
Frankly and unashamed at Death; and, like a child,
Swayed half by joy and half by reticence,
Walking beside its nurse, you walk with Life;
Protected by your smile and an immense
Security and simple confidence.
Your gentle soul,
Your large and quiet kindness;
Ready to caution and console,
And, with an almost blindness
To what was mean and low.
Baseness you never knew;
You could not think that falsehood was untrue,
Nor that deceit would ever dare betray you.
You even trusted treachery; and so,
Guileless, what guile or evil could dismay you?
You were for counsels rather than commands.
Your sweetness was your strength, your strength a sweetness
That drew all men, and made reluctant hands
Rest long upon your shoulder.
Firm, but never proud,
You walked your sixty years as through a crowd
Of friends who loved to feel your warmth, and who
Knowing that warmth, knew you.
Even the casual beholder
Could see your fresh and generous completeness,
Like dawn in a deep forest, growing and shining through.
Such faith has soothed and armed you. It has smiled
Frankly and unashamed at Death; and, like a child,
Swayed half by joy and half by reticence,
Walking beside its nurse, you walk with Life;
Protected by your smile and an immense
Security and simple confidence.
Hearing
the talkers talk, I thought of you . . .
And it was like a great wind blowing
Over confused and poisonous places.
It was like sterile spaces
Crowded with birds and grasses, soaked clear through
With sunlight, quiet and vast and clean.
And it was forests growing,
And it was black things turning green.
And it was laughter on a thousand faces . . .
It was, like victory rising from defeat,
The world made well again and strong—and sweet.
And it was like a great wind blowing
Over confused and poisonous places.
It was like sterile spaces
Crowded with birds and grasses, soaked clear through
With sunlight, quiet and vast and clean.
And it was forests growing,
And it was black things turning green.
And it was laughter on a thousand faces . . .
It was, like victory rising from defeat,
The world made well again and strong—and sweet.
Source:
Father:
An Anthology of Verse
(EP Dutton & Company, 1931)
Soma
A poem by Gieve Patel
On Killing A Tree
A poem by Gieve Patel
On Killing A Tree
It
takes much time to kill a tree,
Not
a simple jab of the knife
Will
do it.
It
has grown
Slowly
consuming the earth,
Rising
out if it, feeding
Upon
its crust, absorbing
Years
of sunlight, air, water,
And
out of its leprous hide
Sprouting
leaves.
So
hack and chop
But
this alone won’t do it.
Not
so much pain will do it.
The
bleeding bark will heal
And
from close to the ground
Will
rise curled green twigs,
Miniature
boughs
Which
if unchecked will expand again
To
former size.
No,
The
root is to be pulled out
Out
of the anchoring earth;
It
is to be roped, tied,
And
pulled out-snapped out
Or
pulled out entirely,
Out
from the earth-cave,
And
the strength of the tree exposed,
The
source, white and wet,
The
most sensitive, hidden
For
years inside the earth.
Then
the matter
Of
scorching and choking
In
sun and air,
Browning,
hardening,
Twisting,
withering,
And
then it is done.
Bobby
A.K. Ramanujan
Birthdays
Birthdays come and go,
for brother,son, daughter,
spouse,niece and nephew,
and among them,mine,and as I grow
older, they come as often as death
anniversaries in all the families
I know,
and they linger under tamarind
trees like other absences.
A.K. Ramanujan
Birthdays
Birthdays come and go,
for brother,son, daughter,
spouse,niece and nephew,
and among them,mine,and as I grow
older, they come as often as death
anniversaries in all the families
I know,
and they linger under tamarind
trees like other absences.
Even universities,
art museums, apple trees
that recycle the seasons,
and inventions like guns
have their birthdays
like St. Francis, Shakespeare,
Gandhi and Washington
marked on calendars.
Birth takes a long time
though death can be sudden,
and multiple like pregnant deer
shot down on the run.
Yet one would like to think,
one kicks and grabs the air
in death throes as a baby
does in its mother's womb
months before the event.
There's
no evidence as far
as I can see, which isn't
very far, to say that death
throes are birth pangs.
Birth seems quite special
every time a mayfly is born
into the many miracles
of day, night and twilight,
but death? Is it a dispersal
of gathered energies
back into their elements,
earth, air, water and fire,
a reworking into other moulds,
grass, worm, bacterial glow
lights, and mother -matter
for other offspring with names
and forms clocked into seasons ?
as I can see, which isn't
very far, to say that death
throes are birth pangs.
Birth seems quite special
every time a mayfly is born
into the many miracles
of day, night and twilight,
but death? Is it a dispersal
of gathered energies
back into their elements,
earth, air, water and fire,
a reworking into other moulds,
grass, worm, bacterial glow
lights, and mother -matter
for other offspring with names
and forms clocked into seasons ?
16
March 1992 (written 15 months before he died)
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