Its been almost three weeks since I bought the Complete Works of T. S. Eliot. I love Eliot, almost since my boyhood days. Will write more on this some other day may be.
Lately I have been reading a lot of Indian Poets and with a slightly vested interests of trying to find roots or ground or origins. And as with all such explorations, I don't know when will I know that I have finally arrived. But the more relevant fact is I am enjoying myself. There were a few particularly enchanting moments that I would like to share.
The poem has a background to it and you unravel or discover more when you know one of the books Agha Shahid Ali wrote was The country without a post office. Even one could read more about the poet and decipher that the partition between the day and the night in his poems are a representation of his American days when it's night in India. But I wouldn't delve much into that, for I celebrate the naive way of looking at poems, where you are not too qualified to split the words to atoms, but are content feeling a poem with your heart. I sometimes do wonder however, how do juries for poetry competitions do the task they do?
p.s.: Yes I missed a week. Apologizes, if you noticed that.
Lately I have been reading a lot of Indian Poets and with a slightly vested interests of trying to find roots or ground or origins. And as with all such explorations, I don't know when will I know that I have finally arrived. But the more relevant fact is I am enjoying myself. There were a few particularly enchanting moments that I would like to share.
The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams
of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
the day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.
Write to me.
-Stationery, Agha Shahid Ali
I can't explain the thrill I experienced when I read the first line: "The moon did not become the sun". The first time I read the opening line, I was captured with a sense of awe - I knew it to be an obvious fact but what it actually did was to make to make me vizualize it's negation - which I would call is a beautiful "flight of imagination". It has that trance inducing touch to it, and you feel it - it is almost like the prelude to uninhibited avalanche of evocative imagery and I love how the imagery so seamlessly melds. And the poem's ending is superb with it's deft abrupt emotive touch.The poem has a background to it and you unravel or discover more when you know one of the books Agha Shahid Ali wrote was The country without a post office. Even one could read more about the poet and decipher that the partition between the day and the night in his poems are a representation of his American days when it's night in India. But I wouldn't delve much into that, for I celebrate the naive way of looking at poems, where you are not too qualified to split the words to atoms, but are content feeling a poem with your heart. I sometimes do wonder however, how do juries for poetry competitions do the task they do?
p.s.: Yes I missed a week. Apologizes, if you noticed that.
Beautiful poem! Loved the part of
ReplyDelete"It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams.."
Thanks for the comments! Any sort of readership is SO encouraging actually :D I am glad you liked the poem.
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