No other bird will surpass its liveliness and elegance. This is one bird that doesn’t sit still it pirouettes about the shady branches of trees incessantly fanning its tail like a dancer who is restless to dance and doesn’t mind if there is an audience or not. The moment it settles down after a sortie to catch flying insects –that in itself is a delight to watch- its body jerks as if it cannot go without another round of dance and takes one dainty step here one step there, drops its wing, up the head, and spread and close the delicate round fan shaped tail. You will be mesmerized by the bird for few more minutes and then off it goes. Fantails don't have any qualm about human presence, indeed is quite bold. So any readers of this blog happen to spot a fantail be an audience you will cherish for a long time. And yes it is a good singer too and is also known for beautiful nest it makes.Wislawa Szymborska: Isn’t sunset a little too much for two eyes!!
It was I think in the year she got the Nobel that I came across the name Wislawa Szymborska, and really loved the way it sounded …of course people found it amazing that I could recall these complicated names!! (they should have known that remembering names is what I am really not good at…I go by how it sounds and I can recall hundreds of sounds which in turn are names!!). So here I was enjoying the sound of the name and very soon I had started to read her poems. She probably is the most exciting contemporary poet in the world, I am also very much influenced by her thoughts (encapsulated in her Nobel Prize speech that I have read many times). Wislawa Szymborska was born in Poland (1923) she worked as translator for sometime. Her poems have charming understated irony. “Excess of kindness could kill us” is how she describes the wonders of nature “Isn’t sunset a little too much for two eyes”. O yes!!. How much I love these lines.While trying to plumb what the void's inner sense is,
I'm bound to pass by all these poppies and pansies.
What a loss when you think how much effort was spent
perfecting this petal, this pistil, this scent
for the one-time appearance, which is all they're allowed,
so aloofly precise and so fragilely proud
These lines from ‘Silence of Plants”. It is a kind of poem when you read you admire so much that can be in danger of being possessive “now now that is something I should have written!!”
But how does someone answer questions
which have never been posed,
and when, on top of that
the one who would answer
is such an utter nobody to you?
Undergrowth, shrubbery,
meadows, and rushes…
everything I say to you is a monologue,
and it is not you who's listening.
A conversation with you is necessary
and impossible,
urgent in a hurried life
and postponed for never.
The war zones we have seen so many tines in TV, people stranded…
They abandon something close to all they've got,
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now preens.
Their shoulders bear pitchers and bundles.
The emptier they get, the heavier they grow.
What happens quietly: someone's dropping from exhaustion.
What happens loudly: someone's bread is ripped away,
Someone tries to shake a limp child back to life.
Few more line from the same poem (it is not right to dissect poems like this but then it will make the blog too long)
Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or, better yet, some nonexistence
for a shorter or a longer while.
Something else will happen, only where and what,
Someone will come at them, only when and who,
in how many shapes, with what intentions.
If he has a choice,
maybe he won't be the enemy
and will let them live some sort of life.
These lines from “One version of Events”.
We were besieged by doubts.
Does knowing everything beforehand
really mean knowing everything.
Is a decision made in advance
really any kind of choice.
Wouldn’t we be better off
dropping the subject
and making our minds up
once we get there.
We looked at earth.
Some daredevils were already living there.
A feeble weed
clung to a rock,
trusting blindly
that the wind wouldn’t tear it off.
A small animal
dug itself from its burrow
with an energy and hope
that puzzled us.
We struck ourselves as prudent,
petty, and ridiculous.
In any case, our ranks began to dwindle.
The most impatient of us disappeared.
They’d left for the first trial by fire,
This much was clear,
especially by the glare of the real fire
they’d just begun to light
on the steep bank of an actual river.
A few of them
actually turned back.
But not in our direction.
And with something they seemed to have won in their hands.
This my favorite “The little on the Soul”. I have read this many times, it is an assertion that is part of all of us. It is so much fun this one…
Periodically one has a soul.
Nobody has it all the time and forever.
Day after day, year after year
can pass without it.
Sometimes only in rapture
and in fears of childhood
it dwells within longer.
Sometimes only in the astonishment,
that we have become old.
It rarely assists us
in strenuous pursuits,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases
or tromping through a road in tight shoes.
While filling in forms
and chopping meat
it usually takes the day off.
In a thousand of our conversations
it participates in one,
and not even necessarily in one,
preferring silence.
When our bodies start aching more and more,
it silently leaves the ward.
It's fussy:
it doesn't see us immediately in a crowd,
it sickens at our attempts at mere advantage
and the shrill clamor of business.
Joy and sorrow
are not all that different to it.
Only in the combination of them
does it stand up.
We can rely on it,
when we are certain of nothing,
and when everything seizes us.
Among all material objects
it likes best clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which work fervently,
Even when nobody looks.
It doesn't say where it comes from
and when it will disappear next,
But it clearly awaits such questions.
It looks like,
as much as we need it,
also it
needs us for something too.
