It was one of the thickest forests still humid from night rain the heavy forecast sky had made the noon eerily dark add to it an information from the locals that king cobra was spotted on the very vicinity where my bird guide and me where in hot pursuit of Malabar trogon. A dull single tone call had alerted us, following the sound, intermittently waiting for it to repeat and adjusting our path through the undergrowth (also sucked by leeches and getting a bleeding cut on head from an ominously thorny branch-must say the omen was missed!!) we finally got the glimpse of the elusive Malabar Trogon. This bird has a peculiar defense mechanism of allowing the duller side of it to the observer and keeping still, they can like owls turn their face 180 degrees and they sit as if hunched, the moment it sense the intruder it flies to nearby branch facing the other way and so we followed, it was as if we were being led, and then it hops to the further branch. It was getting quite tiresome after an hour I declared it is futile and next to impossible to get the front view pictures but my guide was an optimistic fellow and some encouraging words we continue the chase but eventually it was spoiled by group of happy noisy hornbills. Malabar Trogon has black head that is separated by a white ring from the bright crimson underside, the back is dull chestnut, black wings and serrated tails. These birds live exclusively on insects. They have heterodactyl toe (backward toe) arrangement and like woodpeckers can be seen clinging to branches when foraging for insects. The word "trogon" is a Greek term for nibbling as these birds gnaw holes in trees to make their nests.
Though I wasn’t able to take the photos of front view I did glimpse it, mine mine it looks as if the bird is on fire no wonder in Malayalam it is referred to as fire crows. It was worth the chase. I guess readers will have to do with these photos…well I cannot help it when the bird shows so much of nakhras !!
Marianne Moore: Literalist of the imagination
Marianne Moo
re (1887-1972) poems are notable for sharpness of detail, keen observation. Sometimes difficult to read they pose a challenge to the readers, she understood the power of words. To those who complained that her poetry often seemed obscure, she once replied that something that was work to write ought to be work to read. Fond of nature her imagery seemed hinged to her surroundings but pointing to profound just as in this poem “Nevertheless” what a brilliant line this one…
What is there like fortitude! What sap went through that little thread
to make the cherry red!
A trivia: she was big fan of Muhammad Ali !!!. Also that she was asked to suggest names for a car brand…she came out with amazingly ridiculous ones like Resilient Bullet, Ford Silver Sword, Mongoose Civique, Varsity Stroke and yes the clincher Utopian Turtletop....all were rejected!!
Nevertheless
you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle; yet
was, where the fragments met,
a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food
than apple seeds - the fruit
within the fruit - locked in
like counter-curved twin
hazelnuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant -
leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't
harm the roots; they still grow
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear -
leaf clinging to a barbed wire,
a root shot down to grow
in earth two feet below;
as carrots from mandrakes
or a ram's-horn root some-
times. Victory won't come
to me unless I go
to it; a grape tendril
ties a knot in knots till
knotted thirty times - so
the bound twig that's under-
gone and over-gone, can't stir.
The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong over-
comes itself. What is there
like fortitude! What sap
went through that little thread
to make the cherry red!
The fish
wade
through black jade
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash heaps;
opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide
there for the submerged shafts of the
sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices–
in and out, illuminating
the
turquoise sea
of bodies. The water drives a wedge
of iron through the iron edge
of the cliff; whereupon the stars,
pink
rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly-fish, crabs like green
lilies, and submarine
toadstools, slide each on the other.
All
external
marks of abuse are present on this
defiant edifice–
all the physical features of
ac-
cident–lack
of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and
hatchet strokes, these things stand
out on it; the chasm-side is
dead.
Repeated
evidence has proved that it can live
on what can not revive
its youth. The sea grows old in it.
Silences
My father used to say,
"
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "`Make my house your inn'."
Inns are not residences.
Poetry
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all
this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful. When they become so derivative as to become
unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
do not admire what
we cannot understand: the bat
holding on upside down or in quest of something to
eat, elephants pushing, a wild horse taking a roll, a tireless wolf
under
a tree, the immovable critic twitching his skin like a horse that
feels a
flea, the base-
ball fan, the statistician--
nor is it valid
to discriminate against 'business documents and
school-books'; all these phenomena are important. One must
make a distinction
however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the
result is not poetry,
nor till the poets among us can be
'literalists of
the imagination'--above
insolence and triviality and can present
for inspection, 'imaginary gardens with real toads in them', shall
we have
it. In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, you are interested in poetry
