PGR’s blog

In my youth , reading the love poems of Neruda was an intensely passionate experience . As I moved into my mid-life, love  as an emotion took a different turn and I began to think ‘Love is a verb’  and even wrote a blog on it. Still, I have always been in search of a tender love poem that makes a best fit of love’s full-fond and full-grown faces. I am blessed that at last I could find it in this poem by Vicente Aleixandre.

Vicente was one of the greatest Spanish poets of Twentieth century and  was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977. Vicente Aleixandre has been called an existentialist, a mystic pantheist, and a neoromantic. I have been hunting for his poetry collection “A Longing For The Light” for a long time. I could gather a copy only this year. This poem is taken from it.

There is in his poetry a hardness, an unwillingness to sentimentalize over things which must be loved for themselves. A combination of surrealistic wit with  sad undertones. Through a terrific artificiality (for the reader) Aleixandre achieves an impression of great sincerity.  At first his poetry shocks: his words are often “unpoetic,” his images are almost strident, his emotions are definitely outside gentility and not for any pathetic comparisons.

In “Her hand given over”, the poet  holds  the hand of his beloved , possibly in her old age, and  her scrawny hand undergoes an alchemy by his touch, jetting out a journey inside her. This literal submersion  into every nook and corner of his lover’s body, first as a voice and then as his entire being floating inside the lover’s body, creating ripples and stirring renewed passion,  has an amazing flavor, fervency and fullness. This is the way I wish to hold the hand of my lover, transmuting myself into a laughing  melody inside her. I rate this as the sweetest, saddest and truest love poem  I have ever read . 

HER HAND GIVEN OVER

One more day I touch your hand, your warm hand!
Your hand is thin and quiet–sometimes I shut
my eyes and stroke it gently, softly,
to feel its shape, to touch
Its structure, the skin with its wings and beneath that
The stony bone that can't be bribed, the sad bone that never gets
        any
love. Oh sweet flesh that soaks itself in such splendid love!

 
The live heat spreads its voice, its gentle longing,
through your secret, hidden  skin that starts to open;
And my voice slides through it into your warm blood
where it wanders, flouting in your hidden streams
like a second blood singing a shadow song, dark like honey
It kisses you within, flowing slowly like a clear tone in your
        body
that's an echo of my body now, my body full of strong voices.
Oh your changing body wrapped around with just the sound of my
         voice!

 
So I know when I touch your hand only the bone refuses
my love–the never luminous  human bone–.
And I know there's a sad layer in you that doesn't accept me
while your flesh comes white hot for a second,
coated with flame from that lazy stroking on your hand,
your silky, porous hand that begins to moan,
your fine, quiet hand where I come in
slowly, so slowly, secretly into your life,
down to all the deepest blood vessels where I float
and live and finish my song inside of you

(Translated by Lewis Hyde)

LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION

Often in our childhood, we have heard this silly question bombarded on us by all folks and relatives we encounter'"Who do you love more -your father or mother?"  I have no hesitation even today to proclaim that I love my father more.  This is not due to the specific fact that my mother had to board the boat of Charon when I was twenty.  When she was alive, she was overly concerned about my destiny and used to rue whether I would become a spoilt kid. My father, on the other hand,  had a broader understanding of the destiny of his progeny and would always support my natural growth and my habit of do and learn in both good and bad. This imparted confidence, courage and optimism in me. A father is one who stands beside you pulling you up in your ascent and descent.

It now fascinates me that my paternal affinity has its extension to mainly male folks in my family tree. I deeply loved my grandfather and share special relationship with my uncles and my granduncle (my mother's uncle and Sunshine's father) till today.

Quite recently I was reading a collected poetry of Yehuda Amichai , the greatest Israeli poet of last century.  He died from cancer in 2000, at 76. He was worthy of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. But being a Jew, as far as the Scandinavian Judges were concerned, he came from the wrong side of the stockade.

Amichai had brimming admiration and veneration for his father. I am posting below two amazingly beautiful and touching poems of Amichai that pay tributes to paternity.

 LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION

On summer nights I sleep naked

In Jerusalem on my bed, which stands on the brink

of a deep valley

Without rolling into it 

During the day I walk about,

The Ten Commandments on my lips

Like an old song someone is humming to himself

O touch me, touch me, you good woman!

This is not a scar you feel under my skirt

It is a letter of recommendation,folded,

from my father:

"He is still a good boy and full of love"

I remember my father waking me up

for early prayers. He did it caressing

my forehead, not tearing the blanket away

Since then I love him even more

And because of this

Let him be woken up

gently and with love

On the day of resurrection

The above poem resonates with warmth, nostalgia and reverence for his dead father. It deeply conveys his sacred passion, unabashed feeling and tenderness. One has the feeling that, for Amichai, the road to childhood   is still open

Playful wit doesn't work against the feeling, but in tandem with it in this poem. Unlike many modern poets, Amichai is a deep-rooted emotional poet who never shies away from displaying his emotions. It is this emotional fervour that alchemizes a love line like "O touch me, touch me, you good woman!" into a memorial poem and prayer for the dead. To feel that the poet himself is ‘a letter of recommendation’ has a rare breath of warmth. I like the sweet , gentle and religious father in his poem.

On a lighter note, it made me smile to read the line "He did it caressing my forehead, not tearing the blanket away" as tearing the blanket away is still one last act I do to wake up my two lazy kids.

I shall remember this poem as long as I live - a homage to my gentle and loving father as well

 MY FATHER'S MEMORIAL DAY

On my father’s memorial day

I went out to see his mates-

All those buried with him in one row,

His life's graduation class.

I already remember most of their names,

Like a parent collecting his little

From, school all of his friends

My father still loves me, and I

Love him always, so I don't weep.

But in order to do justice to this place

I have lit a weeping in my eyes

With the help of a nearby grave-

A child's. “Our little Yossy who was

Four when he died"

In this poem, Amichai visits not just his father's grave side, but all those buried with him in a single row, a group of people yoked together by death, "his life's graduation class". What surprises us is the total faith and confidence Amichai has in the mutual ongoing love that persists between his father and him ("My father still loves me, and I / Love him always, so I don't weep.") and the way the poem invokes the genuine human sadness of the cemetery itself. Amichai's feeling extends to embrace the feeling of others ("I have lit a weeping in my eyes"). He concludes with a ritual paternal feeling of a father for someone's child.

The Crate (Le Cageot)

In his prose poems, he offers a view of life transcribed into mute symbols around us-Pebbles, trees, flowers, sea, candles, oyster or even cigarettes. He expresses their mute character in moral terms. He recognizes their mortality, vulnerability and bestows on them a heroic vision by projecting more than what they are. His words sculpt them. As a result we see them like figures emerging from stones or as characters from a novel.  'They are heroes ", Ponge says in 'Snail', 'beings whose existence itself is a work of art.' This is exactly why I like him so much.

Ponge has rare sensibility and brilliance to dwell on objects without a desire to possess it or to immerse it with his personal disappointments or desires. His objectifying poetic process aims to grasping thing-in-itself. Do not mistake me here. Ponge is no partisan of art for art sake.

Man arbitrarily placed in the world, makes an arbitrary choice by allowing himself to survive in it before being  arbitrarily removed from it like the crate, used only once and then tossed on the trash heap. The poet having chosen literature to make his life meaningful, which can only partially convey his meaning like the work of any man,  can only partially express man the cosmos.

In his poem 'Pebble' he says that the pebble, the final offspring of a race of giants, is of the same stone as its enormous forbears. If life offers no truth, it nonetheless offers possibilities. For trees, there may be no way out of their 'treehood', 'by the means of trees'-leaves wither and fall-but they do not give up. They go on leafing season after season. They are not 'resigned'. This is the first lesson, 'the heroic vision', as I mentioned earlier, and their first weapon against mortality. Snails, Flowers and Pebbles ' all express an indomitable will and a striving for perfection by whatever means are unique to them: the tree has leaves, the snail its silver wake, man his words. Man also possesses all the 'virtues' of the world he lives in: the fearful fearlessness of the shrimp, the stubbornness of the oyster, the determination of water, the cigarette's ability to create its own environment and its own destruction. Rather than using things as images of human attributes, he covertly uses human attributes as images of things around us (This is quite interesting) .

Ponge underlines that the ultimate weapon is the work of art, the sublime regenerative possibility, which man carries within himself, like the oyster its pearl, the orange in its pip. His poems are not 'morals' in any didactic sense, but they are lessons, models of exemplary virtue to follow.

I am sure that next time when you observe a crate in a busy market or hold the knob of your door, you will pause to ponder and salute its being with a benign smile.

In the year 2002, I was once attending a meeting at my friend  Shahul Hameed’s house. When the meeting was about to be over, he brought a tray of fruits as snacks. Amidst them, I saw something incongruous:- a plateful of sliced pieces of what looked like tomatoes. No one touched the apparent ‘tomatoes’ while we eagerly savored the other fruits. Noticing our inhibition, Shahul told us that they were not tomatoes but sweet persimmons (It is called Kaki fruit in India). He himself had brought it from market by mistake thinking it as tomatoes but was bowled over by its taste. I tasted a piece and I was taken aback by its smooth texture, its sticky sweetness, syrupy taste and indescribably delicious fruity flavor. I was literally tasting a new experience. There onwards, I have become an addict of this fruit, waiting for the season to savor the pleasurable persimmons. But the fruit has a spilt personality. The unripe ones , though sweet, carries a bit of astringent taste. The skin of ripe and glossy one is so taut that one tough touch can break and spill the jelly pulp.

I was reminded of my above experience as I read this beautiful and powerfully painful poem  by a Chinese Poet called Li-Young Lee. It also roused my own maudlin mango memories. There are  several elements that figure importantly in this poem. Persimmon stand for painful memories of cultural barriers imposed by language and custom, and for a present-day loving connection to an elderly, blind father. The poet begins with a schoolboy incident in which he was punished for not knowing the difference between “persimmon” and “precision” and makes a play on other words which sound similar and “that got (him) into trouble.” He takes revenge later, when the teacher brings to class a persimmon that only the narrator knows is unripe, as he “watched the . . . faces” without participating. We now understands that the sixth grader’s misperception due to pronunciation finds the right revenge when the boy can handle the difference in meaning between these two words quite nimbly: “How to choose / persimmons. This is precision.”

Persimmons also remind him of an adult sensual relationship with Donna and of his attempts to teach her Chinese words which he himself can no longer remember. The speaker first suggests, perhaps shamefacedly, his detachment from his parents and their culture by embodying the source of his distraction in the figure of Donna, a white girl (or woman) with whom he lies naked in the grass. The speaker’s vacillating attempts to teach Donna Chinese and his own forgetting of some words due to non-use hint at the fading power of his parents’ culture and its values in USA.

Ripe persimmons continue to gain positive associations as the speaker next recalls his mother’s observation that “every persimmon has a sun / inside, something golden, glowing, / warm as my face.” The second part of the poem describes the role persimmons have played in his father’s life and in their relationship. To comfort his father, gone blind, the narrator gives him two sweet, ripe persimmons, so full and redolent with flavor that it will surely stimulate the senses remaining. The fruit links him with his father when he says ”forgotten” persimmons, “swelled, heavy as sadness, / and sweet as love.”

Later, in the “muddy lighting” of his parents’ cellar, with his father sitting on the stairs, the poet searches for something meaningful from his past: “I rummage, looking / for something I lost.” He finds three rolled-up paintings by his now blind father. As the father reaches to touch a rendering of “Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth,” he remembers “the strength, the tense / precision in the wrist” required to paint them. For both the poet  and reader the search has ended. The poet has recovered two qualities embodied in and demonstrated by his parents that he has found so lacking in American culture: the rich, full warmth of his parents’ love, figured in persimmons, and their precise, caring ways, represented by their respective crafts. The poem ends with the father’s remark that “some things never leave a person”.

Indeed this is precisely crafted poem that reaches into the murky depths of memory to salvage cherishable characteristics of one’s parents and one’s culture. It is a sensitive and supreme example of how a fruitful emotional association such as with persimmon can transform and enrich our life

                              PERSIMMON

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker

slapped the back of my head

and made me stand in the corner

for not knowing the difference

between persimmon and precision.

How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.

Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.

Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one

will be fragrant. How to eat:

put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.

Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.

Chew on the skin, suck it,

and swallow. Now, eat

the meat of the fruit,

so sweet

all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.

In the yard, dewy and shivering

with crickets, we lie naked,

face-up, face-down,

I teach her Chinese. Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.

Naked: I’ve forgotten.

Ni, wo: you me.

I part her legs,

remember to tell her

she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words

that got me into trouble were

fight and fright, wren and yarn.

Fight was what I did when I was frightened,

fright was what I felt when I was fighting.

Wrens are small, plain birds,

yarn is what one knits with.

Wrens are soft as yarn.

My mother made birds out of yarn.

I loved to watch her tie the stuff;

a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class

and cut it up

so everyone could taste

a Chinese apple. Knowing

it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat

but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun

inside, something golden, glowing,

warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper

forgotten and not yet ripe.

I took them and set them both on my bedroom windowsill,

where each morning a cardinal

sang. The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding

he was going blind,

my father would stay up all one night

waiting for a song, a ghost.

I gave him the persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness,

and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting

of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking

for something I lost.

My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,

black cane between his knees,

hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He’s so happy that I’ve come home.

I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.

All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find three scrolls.

I sit beside him and untie

three paintings by my father:

Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.

Two cats preening.

Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,

asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolf tail on the silk,

the strength, the tense

precision in the wrist.

I painted them hundreds of times

eyes closed. These I painted blind.

Some things never leave a person:

scent of the hair of one you love,

the texture of persimmons,

in your palm, the ripe weight.

           Li-Young Lee

JANUARY FIRST 

    A Poem by Octavio Paz

The year's doors open
like those of language
toward the unknown.
Last night you told me:
tomorrow
we shall have to think up signs, sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan
on the double page
of day and paper.
Tomorrow, we shall have to invent,
once more,
the reality of this world.

I opened my eyes late
For a second of a second
I felt what the Aztec felt,
on the crest of the promontory,
lying in wait
for time's uncertain return
through cracks in the horizon.

But no, the year had returned.
It filled all the room
and my look almost touched it.
Time, with no help from us,
had placed
in exactly the same order as yesterday
houses in the empty street,
snow on the houses,
silence on the snow.

You were beside me,
still asleep.
The day had invented you
but you hadn't yet accepted
being invented by the day.
?Nor possibly my being invented, either.
You were in another day.

You were beside me
and I saw you, like the snow,
asleep among the appearances.
Time, with no help from us,
invents houses, streets, trees,
and sleeping women.

When you open your eyes
we'll walk, once more,
among the hours and their inventions.
We'll walk among appearances
and bear witness to time and its conjugations.
Perhaps we'll open the day's doors.
And then we shall enter the unknown.

(Translated by Elizabeth Bishop)

Poets have the power to awaken a new reality in us even about the arrival of a New Year. This has always been my most loved New Year Poem. The Poet puts a new perspective in this poem as if stepping into a New Year is like stepping into a new terrain, stepping into unknown. I love this enigma and mystery that only a great poet like Octavio Paz can invoke.

In every sense we invent a new day by opening a new door and that is our challenge. There must be a sense of future and a decision to invent a new reality in all of us. That is Paz's positive New Year message

Existence is not just what has occurred. Existence is the realm of human possibilities, everything he can become, everything he is capable of. May you all discover new signs, sketch a new landscape and may 2008 invent a better YOU.

May the reality you create for yourselves and for the others around you will be one full of promise, purpose, and brave acts of decency.

(Octavio Paz was former Mexican Ambassador to  India, Nobel Laureate and one of the  greatest poets of Twentieth Century)

Memories of past events provide us with a wide range of thoughts, feelings and emotions. Childhood memories often open a window to laugh, cry and reminisce. In the smiling summer nights of my childhood, I often lay anxiously awaiting  the wee hours of morning to arrive. When the first rooster made its rumble, I woke up and went out with a torch in my hand to all the mango orchards in my neighborhood to pick up the variety of ripe mangoes that had fallen the previous night. The last stop over of this gleeful gathering would be my home terrain. With a basketful of mangoes of the night and a heart of contentment, I would return and make a proud display of my plunder before my sisters as they woke up in the morning. It hardly mattered whether we ate any mango. The mango picking had more fun than munching the mangoes. Often the mangoes rotted in the sacks and the rotten mangoes fertilized our coconut trees.

I have often thought that many little acquisitions and luxuries we make in life have something to do with this mango picking. Many coveted purchases and artifacts now lie as ruined possessions in my home coated in dirt, dust and rust. The desire for them has disappeared with the attainment of it. They can now be dubbed as debris of my wanton lust for avarice. 

Some years ago I came across a poem titled "Blackberry picking" in a poetry collection. It was written by Seamus Heaney, a Nobel Laureate,  considered as the greatest Irish Poet after W B Yeates. The poem instantly struck a chord in me and took me back to my childhood days of mango picking. This poem, though simple, encapsulates an essence that is important because it is fresh and universal.

Blackberry-Picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned,
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.

-Seamus Heaney

briar : a thorny plant

cache: hiding place

potato drills: Planted rows

Bluebeard’s: Bluebeard is a character in a fairy tale who murders his wives

byre: barn

Seamus Heaney once said "I think childhood is, generally speaking, a preparation for disappointment." Children are often disappointed in life: they ask Santa Claus for many things at Christmas time and rarely receive all their requests. Perhaps this is a learning stage for children, preparing them for the disappointments of life.

    Blackberry-Picking explores the dissatisfaction often involved in gaining an object of desire. When you pick hundreds of blackberries they’re really yummy, but after a few days in your bathtub, they go all mangy and moudly. It shows how nothing lasts. You may think things are great now, but BLACKBERRIES DON’T LAST FOREVER, KIDS! 'that is the voice from an adult perspective. The poem may sound depressing and nostalgic poem even for a little kid. Heaney is unveiling greed here. The unrestrained quest for more of the same, for greater amounts of fulfillment leads to the destruction of the object of desire. Removed from its home in the sun, and hoarded, life is slowly destroyed, changed beyond recognition and enjoyment by hostile forces and by time.

The poem runs into two parts, the first longer, describing the gallop for gathering of the blackberries, and their consumption, the arrival of joy and the almost convulsive mad rush to capture every drop of it and the second about half that length, the ruin of the remainder. 

The words are densely packed, marinated with verbs and adjectives and phrases, to establish the tone. It is deliberately rich. Some of the words and phrases used which describe the juiciness of the blackberries are, "glossy purple clot", "summers blood was in it", "flesh was sweet" and "the red ones inked up," all telling of the freshness and ripeness of the blackberries with no trace of imperfections.  The poem fills the mouth as the blackberries do. It is laden with that strange fruit, its sweet clammy experience ready to be tasted and stored. Similar sounding words such as “milk-cans, pea-tins, jam pots”, “hayfields, cornfields”, “trekked and picked” creates a resonant cadence. The poem is hypnotic in its unrelenting linguistic intensity, Rhymes and metaphors like "Grass bleached boots", "Hands peppered with thorns" etc. The poet is careful to balance the copiously sonorous phrases with words that more than hint at a darker side to the bounty of blackberries ( Eg: Rat-grey fungus, stinking, rot)

There are three primary images in Blackberry-Picking. They are the child blackberry-pickers, carrying “milk-cans, pea-tins, jam-pots”, the “fur” or the villain that steals their treasure, and the blackberries themselves.

The children are an image of unrestrained desire. They succumb easily to the “lust for Picking”, savoring the sweet taste and hoarding the unconsumed. They are controlled by their craving. They represent humanity in the poem, in their envy of that which is “gutting on their cache”, and their sense of injustice - “it isn’t fair” that what they have so greatly desired and gained is snatched from them by the swift processes of time.

The “fungus” or "fur" is the explanation called by the speaker for the destruction of their “cache”. It aids in the destruction of their fruit, and is the object of their hatred and derision. He ominously describes “a rat-grey fungus” creeping over a fresh cache of fruit. However, “once off the bush… the sweet flesh would turn sour” by its nature, portending corruption and decay. The pure enjoyment of the eating is subsumed by greed for more until most are lost to the processes of time, when they should have been left on the bush. The pain involved in getting them is multiplied when they are consumed by an outside force, the “fur”. The speaker knows this, although he does not acknowledge it to the end of the poem.

Blackberries themselves are part of childhood, a yearly summer ritual, an object of enjoyment, of “trekking and picking” throughout the countryside. Next, the blackberries are intensely desirable, they are “glossy purple”, they have “sweet flesh”, and they “tinkle” pleasantly when thrown into a container. It is their richness that is so desirable; their contents carry “summer’s blood". They are also ephemeral, which is part of their desirability. Every year the speaker challenges the laws of nature and “hopes they will keep”. Even as the picking days are continuing the berries grow from “green” to “red” and finally “ink… up” to “big dark blobs”.

The “lust” for blackberries is a blood lust. Their “flesh is sweet”, like “blood”. The children are willing to suffer a great deal of pain to satisfy “that hunger”. Then Heaney’s tone becomes decidedly ominous - the blackberries are “like a plate of eyes”, their palms are stained with the juice, as “Bluebeard’s” were stained with blood.

The final part of the poem is a desolate relation of the half-innocent greed of the blackberry-pickers, and their horror and jealousy at their prize’s ruin. It continues in the petulant tone of an upset child - “It wasn’t fair/That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot” and concludes in a more distant, grave, accepting tone, revealing that even the child knew the berries would not “keep”.

 This is indeed a great poem that acts as restorative tonic to our sins and cravings in life and reminds us how things never live up to our expectation and leave a stain as well in their destiny of decay.