A typical Shrike –a distinctive bandit band- it prefers colder climate and so a migrant into Indian plains during winter from regions of Mongolia to Siberia. Generally seen singly on the fringes of forest sitting on the bush or small tree from which it keeps a lookout for insects or small prey. A shy and active bird that posses quite a harsh call. I found this one on the outskirts of Assam on my way back, quite lucky to spot. Hans Magnus Enzensberger
and we also know that we can’t help anybody really
and that nobody really can help us
and that we are extremely gifted and brilliant
and free to choose between nothing and naught
and that we must analyse this problem very carefully
and that we take two lumps of sugar in our tea
oh we know
These lines from songs for those who know by Hans Magnus Ezensberger (he avoided any capital letters in his poems). I like this poem since the sarcasm is not only quite biting but very contemporary and suits very much to the elite in poor and society with wide disparities like India. Hans Magnus Ezensberger (b.1929) is German poet who believ
ed that poems “should be like utensils, publically accessible like graffiti on a wall, not hermitic or esoteric ciphers to be decoded by an initiated elite. The same elite who had either abetted or acquiesced in the Nazi dictatorship that was to make it powerless”. Having lived through the worst period in German history Ezensberger seems to be in constant guard against complacency, his poems are too complex to be identified with anything specific. He is quite critical of German ‘inwardness’ and compared it to conformism, his had strong views on Holderlin and Rilke. Like Brecht he wrote public poems but without the pretence that communism doctrine has the answer to every question.for the grave of a peace-loving man
this one was no philanthropist,
avoided meetings, stadiums, the large stores.
did not eat the flesh of his own kind.
violence walked the streets,
smiling, not naked.
but there were screams in the sky.
people’s faces were not very clear.
they seemed to be battered
even before the blow has struck home.
one thing for which he fought all his life,
with words, tooth, and claw, grimly,
cunningly, off his own bat:
the thing which he called peace,
now that he’s got it, there is no longer a mouth
over his bones, to taste it with.
middle class blues
we can’t complain.
we’re not out of work.
We don’t go hungry.
We eat.
the grass grows,
the national product,
the fingernail,
the past.
the streets are empty.
the deals have been clinched.
the sirens are silent.
all that will pass.
the dead have made their wills
the rain’s become a drizzle
the war’s not yet declared.
there’s no hurry for that.
we eat the grass.
we eat the national product
we eat the fingernails.
we eat the past.
we have nothing to conceal.
we have nothing to miss.
we have nothing to say.
we have.
The watch has been wound up.
The bills have been paid.
The washing up has been done.
The last bus is passing by.
it is empty.
we can’t complain.
what are we waiting for.
These lines from manhattan island
when those who were cheated wise up
to all the big lies,
when they shoulder their desperate rage
like rifles:
there will always be mudholes;
they’ll have to paddle across, climb up
the unending fire-escapes
into the cold bitter sky.
historical process
the bay is frozen up
the trawlers are ice bound
so what
you are free.
you can lie down.
you can get up again.
it doesn’t matter about your name
you can disappear.
and return.
that’s possible.
a fighter howls across the island.
even when a man dies
letters still come to him.
there isn’t much to be lost or thwarted.
you can sleep
that’s possible.
the ice breaker will be here by the morning.
so what.
it doesn’t matter about your name.
Florian Illies, literary editor of Die Zeit, writes "Whenever Germany has started dreaming, Enzensberger has already woken up again. He took part in all the great German illusions and utopias, but he was quicker than anyone else to recognise their limitations. Of course, there will always be some who prefer to keep on dreaming and won't forgive him his talent for grasping reality." In Charles Simic's view, what makes Enzensberger "the best German poet since the second world war" is that "he has the largest range of subject matter, employs a variety of styles and conveys better than any other poet of that period the experience of someone who came of age during the war. Almost every one of his poems, be they lyric, dramatic or narrative, has a polemical quality. That is to say, he neither takes poetry, nor the subject matter he writes about for granted."
A scribble...
The other
There is this other
that worries,
frowns at my misdemeanour,
ecstatic about pleasant surprises,
fumes in rage on dereliction,
wants to acquaint all and everything.
Not me though
I sit silent
Indifferent to other
of whom i know nothing
Is that a mosquito that alight
on my toe?
