Do you not remember how he sat at the window and wondered
at the tangle of your roots and plunged underground?

The women would come to fill their jars in the pond,
and your huge black shadow would wriggle on the water
like sleep struggling to wake up.

Sunlight danced on the ripples like restless tiny shuttles
weaving golden tapestry.

Two ducks swam by the weedy margin above their shadows,
and the child would sit still and think.

He longed to be the wind and blow through your resting branches,
to be your shadow and lengthen with the day on the water,
to be a bird and perch on your topmost twig, and to float like
those ducks among the weeds and shadows.

I have always loved this simple Tagore poem ,so full of pretty images. Nice to think of the birds that have nested in the shaggy hair of the banyan and left it. Come to think of it ,the banyan has lost count of the birds that have nested in her hair,made it shaggy and left for other trees,other skies. The banyan has forgotten all of them,standing on the bank of the pond.

But surely it cannot forget the little child on the window who admired her tangled roots and plunged underground (jumped from the high window). Surely not the women who would fill their jars in the pond,as the banyan’s shadow would wiggle on the water making indecent passes at them. “sleep struggling to wake up” is a delicious image !

The most brilliant image is that of the sunlight dancing on the ripples like a weaver’s shuttle weaving fine golden tapestry.

Two ducks swam by the weedy margin above their shadows (imagine this scene as a photographer’s composition and you will love it) .

The child would sit still and think. Think what? How would it be to be the wind and blow through her branches? To be the banyan’s shadow on the water that will lengthen as the day progresses. To be a bird that perches on the topmost twig of the banyan and survey the pond . To float like the ducks among the weeds and shadows..

There are still countless ponds and banyans on their banks where time stands still in the Bengal of Tagore.But the child is missing from the window. He is now playing video games in a hole of an apartment in Kolkata.

Gleaming eyes and mighty chest and soft soundless paws of grandeur and murder?  

The wind slipped through the leaves as if afraid lest its voice And the noise of its steps perturb the pitiless Splendour,

 Hardly daring to breathe. But the great beast crouched and crept, and crept and crouched a last time, noiseless, fatal, 

Till suddenly death leaped on the beautiful wild deer as it drank

5 Unsuspecting from the great pool in the forest’s coolness and shadow, 

And it fell and, torn, died remembering its mate left sole in the deep woodland,

- Destroyed, the mild harmless beauty by the strong cruel beauty in Nature. 

But a day may yet come when the tiger crouches and leaps no more in the dangerous heart of the forest,

As the mammoth shakes no more the plains of Asia; 

Jeweled with embers of opal and peridote.

See the white river that flashes and scintillates,

Curved like a tusk from the mouth of the city-gates.

Hark, from the minaret, how the muezzin’s call

Floats like a battle-flag over the city wall.

From trellised balconies, languid and luminous

Faces gleam, veiled in a splendor voluminous.

Leisurely elephants wind through the winding lanes,

Swinging their silver bells hung from their silver chains.

Round the high Char Minar sounds of gay cavalcades

Blend with the music of cymbals and serenades.

Over the city bridge Night comes majestical,

Borne like a queen to a sumptuous festival.

Apart from the dreamy quality of Sarojini’s verse, what I find interesting about this poem is the local color of the imagery which becomes appealing to someone like me who lives in Hyderabad. The white river of Musi may not be flashing and scintillating any more, the river now being a stinking cesspool of the city’s overflowing filth. At least one can imagine the trellised balconies and the luminous faces that gleam ,veiled in voluminous splendor .No longer do leisurely elephants wind through the winding lanes swinging silver bells in their silver chains .The muezzin’s call is still there but the gay cavalcades are replaced by political processions with stone throwing mobs.

The speckled sky still burns like a pigeon’s throat jeweled with embers of opal and peridote when you watch the Charminar from the Mecca Masjid’s pigeoned courtyard. The place is now out of bounds for photographers, a divine place for a dusk photograph. If we cannot experience the joy of an evening there, let us live it down the poet’s memory of the times when there were no security concerns.

Some are meet for a maiden’s wrist,
Silver and blue as the mountain mist,
Some are flushed like the buds that dream
On the tranquil brow of a woodland stream,
Some are aglow wth the bloom that cleaves
To the limpid glory of new born leaves

Some are like fields of sunlit corn,
Meet for a bride on her bridal morn,
Some, like the flame of her marriage fire,
Or, rich with the hue of her heart’s desire,
Tinkling, luminous, tender, and clear,
Like her bridal laughter and bridal tear.

Some are purple and gold flecked grey
For she who has journeyed through life midway,
Whose hands have cherished, whose love has blest,
And cradled fair sons on her faithful breast,
And serves her household in fruitful pride,
And worships the gods at her husband’s side.

I love the images used here for describing the colors and textures of the glass bangles being on sale in the temple fair.

“shining loads” ,“circles of light” ,”silver and blue as the mountain mist”, ”flushed like the buds that dream”, “Like fields of sunlit corn”, “like the flame of her marriage fire” , “Purple and gold-flecked”

Most of the imagery is visual. The only auditory image used is “tinkling” which comes into use only when the bangles are worn. Mountains and meadows and streams are invoked here because the glass sellers in a temple fair especially in Hyderabad (the home of Sarojini Naidu) are usually banjarins ,women from a nomadic tribe called “banjaras”.

What is that dirge-like murmur that I hear
Like the sea breaking on a shingle-beach?
It is the tree’s lament, an eerie speech,
That haply to the unknown land may reach.
Unknown, yet well-known to the eye of faith!
Ah, I have heard that wail far, far away
In distant lands, by many a sheltered bay,
When slumbered in his cave the water-wraith
And the waves gently kissed the classic shore
Of France or Italy, beneath the moon,
When earth lay trancèd in a dreamless swoon:
And every time the music rose — before
Mine inner vision rose a form sublime,
Thy form, O Tree, as in my happy prime
I saw thee, in my own loved native clime.

(An excerpt from Toru Dutt’s Our Casuarina Tree Toru Dutt (1856-1877) was one of the earliest Indo-Anglian poets )

(For the full poem go here)

I love these lines for the beauty of the poet’s imagination-the dirge-like wail of the casuarina tree is heard by her across the continents, in France or England ,when she sits on these “classic shores” and “many a sheltered bay”

Casuarina trees are found everywhere on the Indian coastline .When the sea wind passes through the needle-like leaves of clusters of these trees they make a soft hum which is cloyingly beautiful. Here the poet sees the music as a dirge-like murmur,a lament , an eerie speech. The poet was then still in her twenties ,pursuing higher education in England and France .I do not know why she felt the pathos at the time.Perhaps she had the beginnings of consumption already ,of which she would die a few years later after her return to India.

(translated from the Marathi by Dilip Chitre)

The nocturnal porcupine reclines here
Like an alluring grey bouquet
Wearing the syphilitic sores of centuries
Pushing the calendar away
Forever lost in its own dreams

Man’s lost his speech
His god’s a shitting skeleton
Will this void ever find a voice, become a voice?

If you wish, keep an iron eye on it to watch
If there’s a tear in it, freeze it and save it too
Just looking at its alluring form, one goes berserk
The porcupine wakes up with a start
Attacks you with its sharp aroused bristles
Wounds you all over, through and through
As the night gets ready for its bridegroom, wounds begin to blossom
Unending oceans of flowers roll out
Peacocks continually dance and mate

This is hell
This is a swirling vortex
This is an ugly agony
This is pain wearing a dancer’s anklets

Shed your skin, shed your skin from its very roots
Skin yourself
Let these poisoned everlasting wombs become disembodied.
Let not this numbed ball of flesh sprout limbs
Taste this
Potassium cyanide!
As you die at the infinitesimal fraction of a second,
Write down the small ‘s’ that’s being forever lowered.

Here queue up they who want to taste
Poison’s sweet or salt flavour
Death gathers here, as do words,
In just a minute, it will start pouring here.

O Kamatipura,
Tucking all seasons under your armpit
You squat in the mud here
I go beyond all the pleasures and pains of whoring and wait
For your lotus to bloom.
— A lotus in the mud.

http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=10554

A very disturbing poem about the world of Mumbai’s whoreland. Filled with intense pathos, the poem does not even try to underplay the emotions but rather plays up the ugliness and squalor of the lives of the unfortunate women perhaps, carried away by the horror of the scene. The imagery is extremely evocative. “As the night gets ready for its bridegroom, wounds begin to blossom “-perhaps a reference to the flowers the women wear to deck themselves up for the night’s customers. This is pain wearing a dancer’s anklet recalls the horrors of the mujra dance with which the customers are entertained.

“Let these poisoned everlasting wombs become disembodied.
Let not this numbed ball of flesh sprout limbs”

We may recall the “sprout” image used by T.S.Eliot in the Waste Land:

Stetson, you who were with me in Mylae,
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Did it sprout? Will it bloom this year?

The horror continues with the death of the unborn kids, who are for ever being lowered into holes in the earth:

As you die at the infinitesimal fraction of a second,
Write down the small ‘s’ that’s being forever lowered

The poem’s end is surprisingly tender and on a note of hope.

O Kamatipura,
Tucking all seasons under your armpit
You squat in the mud here
I go beyond all the pleasures and pains of whoring and wait
For your lotus to bloom.

Simple imagery but very evocative. “A window is illumined in the wall of darkness”-imagine people sitting huddled in the tent to watch the silent movie,the screen appearing luminous in the sea of darkness. “The actors move their lips ,voiceless”-strange cinema where you have to imagine what the characters are saying by their lip movements.Even the flower here blossoms silently but Uncle Mohan Singh is actively making the flowers blossom through his harmonium music.Tonight the people of Nakodar are dreaming together their joint dreams and perhaps,their separate dreams as well.

Above all, this: When a woman turns
Black clouds of hair, with a rhythmic hand
Weaving their silk in the possessive sun,
He sees her common eyes stretch to a land
O lost, lost; as when repentance yearns
For hope,and love, and finds that there is none.
http://www.geocities.com/varnamala/plal.html

Of course the the poet is talking about a poet. A clumsy poet who wears his hair like an aureole,stammers at parties,slips from a tram and puts off the mending of a sole.  But he is agile and observant ,noticing all those things like the spider’s intestines  claiming harlot,smuggler and black marketeer .In the “clicking” grin he divines a moody world of  artifice and fear.

The most beautiful part of the poem is the image that comes in the second stanza .In this the poet “sees” an exaggerated poetry in the woman’s eyes when they were just common.When the woman turns black clouds of hair ,with a rhythmic hand weaving their silk in the possessive sun,he sees her eyes stretch to a land lost ,as when repentance yearns for hope and love and finds that there is none. Delicious.The poet ,rather too quickly,divines a moody world of artifice and fear.

One wonders if the poet is having a quiet dig at our poet  friend who is spinning fancy  tales about the woman who is standing in the sun  to comb her hair.

Images consult
one
another,
a conscience-
stricken
jury,
and come
slowly
to a sentence.

http://www.geocities.com/varnamala/ramanujan.html

I love the economy of words and the playful pun on the word “sentence” .The poetic process ,if one may call it that,is such that the poem dies still-born at times leaving the poet disgruntled .Some times the sentence may come out after all which will produce a semblance of a poem .At other times the verse describing the process is itself a lovely poem as this one is.

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