Musings
Why poetry matters . . .
Poetry is always about the human condition. Or you could say it is the story of the individual in terms of a broader connection with the collective body of men and women going through the pains and passions on which life comes as an offering to them. Yes, poetry is often a happy reflection of the turns and twists of the heart, of the rhythms which inject meaning into existence. More often than not, though, it is the breaking heart which reveals itself searingly through poetic imagery.
The recently dead Wislawa Szymborska put it in perspective. She was a weaver of quiet passion and in that silence of hers she stumbled upon a certain rebellious streak in her. Observe that rebellion:
I believe in the refusal to take part
I believe in the ruined career
I believe in the wasted years of work
I believe in the secret taken to the grave And there you have a certain peek into the nature of poetry. It is all about the secret pain, the unrevealed agony which torments you deep inside your soul. You have loved, and you have paid the price of that love. Or perhaps you might have turned away from the love of one for whom absolute devotion to you, to the principle of love, was all? Rejection often results in a lengthening of misery. Sometimes it coils itself into a curse, as Donne would have you know: When by thy scorn, O murderess, I am dead
And that thou thinkest thee free from all
Solicitations from me,
Then shall my ghost come to thy bed
And thee in worse arms shall see.
Then thy sick taper will begin to wink . . . One must be battered by rejection many times over to be able to come forth with such eloquent bitterness. Donne does it and, like him, so many others. Anna Akhmatova was a double victim of pain, first at the hands of the authoritarian state which took intense pleasure in tormenting the likes of her; and then from an internal bleeding caused by the greyness of her surroundings. She went looking for love, was probably not quite ready to be spurned, even if subtly. Watch the sadness as it drips from her: I cannot say if it is our love,
Or the day, that is ending. It is a loaded statement here, testimony once again to the greatest joy and the biggest sadness that love can cause to descend on our lives. But then steps into the picture Rabindranath Tagore, with his mystical poetry, almost as if to inform you that beyond this life there is promise of the infinity. The cloud and the night come in fusion. To what purpose? Observe yet again: The cloud has said, 'I shall go',
The night has said, 'I go . . .'
The sea sings, 'I have found the shore;
I am no more.' It is the happy burial of the self in a larger, spiritual Self which comes through in these thoughts. Poetry is a constant reminder that at the end of the day life does not matter. Nothing matters but the end, the finality of our moments on earth. And yet before the end is nigh, it is the purity of romance that must be at play: I shall sing you a song
That is why you keep me awake
A stirring plays in my bosom
O you who awake my sadness
I shall sing you a song. Desolation is not what you spot here, for in Tagore it is the optimism beyond the known which is at constant play. But poetry will not function without the bleak, without the heart-breaking. TS Eliot warns you that he will show you fear in a handful of dust. Of course, the theme has built up from a seedling of a thought. Eliot leaves little question of being ambiguous: I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. That is, again, a picture of the prematurely old, struggling Indian peasant, toiling from sun-up to sundown, Somerset Maugham painted once. The irony is always at work in the world of poetry. Even as poetry grows, the individual shrinks. Eliot's Prufrock speaks for the shrinking individual: I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. Poetry, then, makes you wonder at the various contradictions which assail the soul. Perhaps much more than that, it brings sadness in its wake, indeed symbolizes sadness, enough to punch holes in an already bleeding heart. William Butler Yeats gives you that wounded heart: When you old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face. And love is what lights up the path in Faiz Ahmed Faiz's landscape of the soul: With the crack of dawn was spread in the sky
The roseate of your cheeks,
And with nightfall came down the cascade
Of your tresses on the world's face. Across the landscape of poetry, there are the whispers of mortality we hear. All glory is fleeting, says the poet. The grave levels all. Thomas Gray points you to the darkness beyond life, to the grave which has collapsed in rain and wind through the centuries: The paths of glory lead but to the grave. It is at such turnings of the ancient crossroads of life and death that you recall Syed Khwaja Moinul Hassan, the flames of anguish spiralling out of his heart: Like a candle each second melting down
I am dying at the top
This night, it's my night,
It's my time in history;
Tomorrow brings the light of another day Which only has Pablo Neruda walk over to you, to stamp on your soul that familiar tale of lost love: We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
While the blue light dropped on the world.
I have seen from my window
The fiesta of sunset in the distant
Mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sun
Burned like a coin in my hand.
I remembered you with my soul clenched
In that sadness of mine that you know. Poetry rises in the ripple of a stream. It awakens on nights battered by the monsoon. It takes shape in the lowering of the coffin into the grave. Poetry is then reborn in the laughter of the woman you met aeons ago. 'Why did you rouse me from sleep?' She asks in soft happiness. You brood on the times when she and you will be shards of memory. Poetry for you, again? The winds will not answer. (World Poetry Day was observed on 21 March).
I believe in the ruined career
I believe in the wasted years of work
I believe in the secret taken to the grave And there you have a certain peek into the nature of poetry. It is all about the secret pain, the unrevealed agony which torments you deep inside your soul. You have loved, and you have paid the price of that love. Or perhaps you might have turned away from the love of one for whom absolute devotion to you, to the principle of love, was all? Rejection often results in a lengthening of misery. Sometimes it coils itself into a curse, as Donne would have you know: When by thy scorn, O murderess, I am dead
And that thou thinkest thee free from all
Solicitations from me,
Then shall my ghost come to thy bed
And thee in worse arms shall see.
Then thy sick taper will begin to wink . . . One must be battered by rejection many times over to be able to come forth with such eloquent bitterness. Donne does it and, like him, so many others. Anna Akhmatova was a double victim of pain, first at the hands of the authoritarian state which took intense pleasure in tormenting the likes of her; and then from an internal bleeding caused by the greyness of her surroundings. She went looking for love, was probably not quite ready to be spurned, even if subtly. Watch the sadness as it drips from her: I cannot say if it is our love,
Or the day, that is ending. It is a loaded statement here, testimony once again to the greatest joy and the biggest sadness that love can cause to descend on our lives. But then steps into the picture Rabindranath Tagore, with his mystical poetry, almost as if to inform you that beyond this life there is promise of the infinity. The cloud and the night come in fusion. To what purpose? Observe yet again: The cloud has said, 'I shall go',
The night has said, 'I go . . .'
The sea sings, 'I have found the shore;
I am no more.' It is the happy burial of the self in a larger, spiritual Self which comes through in these thoughts. Poetry is a constant reminder that at the end of the day life does not matter. Nothing matters but the end, the finality of our moments on earth. And yet before the end is nigh, it is the purity of romance that must be at play: I shall sing you a song
That is why you keep me awake
A stirring plays in my bosom
O you who awake my sadness
I shall sing you a song. Desolation is not what you spot here, for in Tagore it is the optimism beyond the known which is at constant play. But poetry will not function without the bleak, without the heart-breaking. TS Eliot warns you that he will show you fear in a handful of dust. Of course, the theme has built up from a seedling of a thought. Eliot leaves little question of being ambiguous: I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. That is, again, a picture of the prematurely old, struggling Indian peasant, toiling from sun-up to sundown, Somerset Maugham painted once. The irony is always at work in the world of poetry. Even as poetry grows, the individual shrinks. Eliot's Prufrock speaks for the shrinking individual: I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. Poetry, then, makes you wonder at the various contradictions which assail the soul. Perhaps much more than that, it brings sadness in its wake, indeed symbolizes sadness, enough to punch holes in an already bleeding heart. William Butler Yeats gives you that wounded heart: When you old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face. And love is what lights up the path in Faiz Ahmed Faiz's landscape of the soul: With the crack of dawn was spread in the sky
The roseate of your cheeks,
And with nightfall came down the cascade
Of your tresses on the world's face. Across the landscape of poetry, there are the whispers of mortality we hear. All glory is fleeting, says the poet. The grave levels all. Thomas Gray points you to the darkness beyond life, to the grave which has collapsed in rain and wind through the centuries: The paths of glory lead but to the grave. It is at such turnings of the ancient crossroads of life and death that you recall Syed Khwaja Moinul Hassan, the flames of anguish spiralling out of his heart: Like a candle each second melting down
I am dying at the top
This night, it's my night,
It's my time in history;
Tomorrow brings the light of another day Which only has Pablo Neruda walk over to you, to stamp on your soul that familiar tale of lost love: We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
While the blue light dropped on the world.
I have seen from my window
The fiesta of sunset in the distant
Mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sun
Burned like a coin in my hand.
I remembered you with my soul clenched
In that sadness of mine that you know. Poetry rises in the ripple of a stream. It awakens on nights battered by the monsoon. It takes shape in the lowering of the coffin into the grave. Poetry is then reborn in the laughter of the woman you met aeons ago. 'Why did you rouse me from sleep?' She asks in soft happiness. You brood on the times when she and you will be shards of memory. Poetry for you, again? The winds will not answer. (World Poetry Day was observed on 21 March).
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