Sparrow sized Spotted Munia belong to the same family as Beaver birds. I recall writing about White throat in my earlier blog. Spotted munias have dark chocolate colored upper plumage, while the lower plumage is white banded in brown giving it the spotted appearance. They are found in bushy terrain near luxuriant growth or cultivation. They breed during rain and the nest is a messy affair, these roosting pair I spotted the other day at Butterfly Park ceiling at the exit!!. The above I almost bump into on my way back, it wasn’t at all happy at my presence and made it amply clear before flying away. Birds are quite expressive look at the above pic and you really see a very annoyed Munia!!.Munia is a quite a popular ‘home name’ for girl children in north India mostly at the lower strata, I knew many who were called as munia when I was a kid (I guess munni is generic for girl child, munia an extension of endearment).
Mitsuharu Kaneko (1895–1975)
When I’m asked for what I was born,
Without scruple, I’ll reply, To oppose
I came across this Japanese poet quite accidentally on the Net, and found it quite a fun to read. Apart from the poems what attracted me to this man was that the name Mitsuharu he concocted for himself (I strongly identify with that!!). Kaneko was adopted by a wealthy family, he was an academic failure. He had to repeat one grade at the prestigious Gyohsei Junior High School, which was established by French Catholics. He entered Waseda University but dropped out, entered Tokyo School of Arts to study Japanese painting but dropped out, entered Keio Un
iversity to study English but dropped out (I like this guy!!). He began reading Chinese and later Western writers, like Schopenhauer, Poe, Oscar Wilde, Baudelaire, Whitman so on. Years later his painterly skills enabled him to earn occasional money as he traveled abroad penniless (His paintings included a good deal of pornography!!). On the death of his foster father he inherited huge amount of money and found himself in Europe, he returned to edit poetry magazine. Soon he depleted his money and was reduced to vagabond for few years. Later he arrived at Paris selling his painting and so on. Returning to Japan during Second World War. Writing an account of his life as a poet titled Shijin (The Poet),
. . . some of us may wonder and marvel how we’ve been able to spend our whole life with an unexpected line of work, but realising that we’ve reached such an age as to be unable to do anything about it even if we thought about it, we decide to compel ourselves to find something worthwhile, albeit reluctantly, in the years ahead of the life we didn’t want. That’s what we usually do. There’s something about us human beings that’s piteous and lovely.
This poem “Opposition” is quite popular, also happens to be my favorite
In my youth
I was opposed to school.
And now, again,
I’m opposed to work.
Above all it is health
And righteousness that I hate the most.
There is nothing so cruel to man
As health and honesty.
Of course I’m opposed to the Japanese spirit
And duty and human feeling make me vomit.
I’m against any government anywhere
And show my bum to authors and artists circles.
When I’m asked for what I was born,
Without scruple, I’ll reply, To oppose.
When I’m in the east
I want to go to the west.
I fasten my coat at the left, my shoes right and left.
My hakama I wear back to front and I ride a horse facing its buttocks.
What everyone else hates I like
And my greatest hate of all is people feeling the same.
Is the only fine thing in life.
To oppose is to live.
To oppose is to get a grip on the very self.
Idea
Living is a constant restraint
Bearing the tensions- I know
But the world is so incredibly askew I can hardly
stand.
In the slime of moss and fish, I am like a beginning
skater ;
slipping and clinging,
irritated. I exhaust my life’s energy to carry a
cup of coffee,
without spilling it, to such a remote table.
And hecklers shout, some near my ear,
“No one will hear you even if you make it”
Striking me with the idea that my effort will
be in vain.
To an old lady
The woman’s become naked. But
not to wait for caresses.
In the shifting light and dark
her skin faintly smells.
Knowing no lewdness, her
thin blo
om,her fine wrinkles.
Like the marks left by someone hitting,
these aquamarine stains
that remain all over her body
are the fingerprints of those who touched her and went.
Like a fruit left unsold
at the fruit store.
The woman’s become naked. Summer clothes
changed to those for autumn, that transience.
Love 13
The woman had never had it done to her before.
The man, just like a brand-new teacher
conducting a chemical experiment at the podium,
doesn’t seem certain of his hands, even after many tries.
He holds her hand gently,
caresses it, then holds it against his cheek,
guides it, unobtrusively,
down to his pants to make her touch it.
Then, he manages to do
many more silly things,
but this is neither because he is unlikeable
nor because she is indecent.
He covers her face with a handkerchief
and, to calm himself,
lights a cigarette, has a drag,
then deliberately unhooks her.
He feigns astonishment at every turn,
and says, in a dumbly excited voice,
“So this is what you call a navel!”
Darn, you know you have one, too.
Song of jelly fish
Rocking, rocking,
jostled, jostled,
for so long, I’ve grown to be
as transparent as this.
But, getting rocked isn’t an easy matter, I’d say.
You can see through from outside, can’t you? Look.
In my digestive organs
a toothbrush with its brush worn down,
and, a small amount of yellow water.
No, sir, I have nothing as dirty as
a heart. Not by this late date.
Waves took it away
along with the intestines.
Me? Me means
emptiness.
Emptiness, being rocked,
was rocked back, again, by the waves.
I wilt, you may think, but then
I bloom wisteria-purple;
come night, at night,
I light a lamp.
No, what’s being rocked, truth be told,
is just the heart that has lost its body.
The thin oblate
that had wrapped the heart.
No, no, it’s no more than the tired shadow
of the pain of being rocked, rocked,
jostled, jostled,
until I became as empty as this.
This I scribbled the other day
Gone is the world I know
When motives dictate reason
when voice raised for greed
when innocents slaughtered for power
Gone is the world I know.
When sustaining tree truncated
and land mashed out of its vitality, made fit for development
When every creature and life form that doesn’t serve purpose
pushed out to extinction
Gone is the world I know
Gone is the world I know
and all the little world’s in it
of sparkle and spirit
of life and living.
