A bird endemic to
Indian peninsula, Purple-rumped Sunbird
(Leptocoma zeylonica) is another of charming bird that I get to see quite
often these days. So much so he has started to pose for me…well this is one
bird that seem to know the value of good pictures! The acrobat they perform to
get to the nectar, and the ensuing commotion is worth the time. Sunbirds are the
closest to Hummingbirds we can see in this part of the world.
Sometime back I bought
this book Books That Changed the World
(Andrew Taylor), quite an interesting collection. From Indian subcontinent the
only book find mention is Kamasutra,
so you can gather how trivial the compilation is. There is no mention of
Marquez while JK Rowling is very much there. I am wondering which world the
book has changed. So did I waste my 450R? Well not really, I wouldn’t undermine
the collection, there are some insightful books I wasn’t aware of. So I would
say, though I was quite disappointed by absence of Kafka, Dostoevsky so on but
there is fair amount to chew on. About fifteen
years back I had another of similar sought by Osho, that one too introduced me
to new writings and ideas, the prominent being Nietzsche!! You never know what
can come from where? That makes it quite exciting. So coming back to the above
mentioned book, I was riveted to Poems
by Wilfred Owen. Quite a find that one, though I must add Yeats didn’t think
much of him (“…however if I had known it I would have excluded him just the
same. He is all blood, dirt and sucked sugar stick”. Clearly Yeats got it
absolutely wrong as he was of Tagore, indeed Yeats is passé). Wilfred Owen is
an amazing find, and I am quite taken in by the lines he wrote. At this instance
I would also like to point out two movies, that comes to mind, that showed
devastating effects of war, Stanley Kubrick’s (Dr. Strangelove, is a stand out movie) Full Metal Jacket and Kurosawa’s Dreams (my favorite movies of Kurosawa is too long to be listed
here!). There are other movies too but these two stands out in its impact and
influence.
Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918): What passing bells for those who die as cattle?
Above
all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My
subject is War, and the pity of War.
The
Poetry is in the pity.
The tag that is associated
with
Wilfred Owen is ‘greatest of the war poets who have written in the English
language’. Owen fancied himself to be poet and man of letters, reading Shelley and Keats,
but eventually enrolled himself in the Army due to the demands of the time, during
the First World War. Very soon the mild mannered, shy youngster was facing the
full horror of the war, he tried to play his part and even won gallantry award.
He wrote “I
lost all my earthly faculties, and I fought like an angel . . . I captured a
German Machine Gun and scores of prisoners . . . I only shot one man with my
revolver . . . My nerves are in perfect order”. But the traumatic sights
and experience left an indelible mark on him. He describes himself as "a
conscientious objector with a very seared conscience."
Merry
it was to laugh there -
Where
death becomes absurd and life absurder.
For
power was on us as we slashed bones bare
Not
to feel sickness or remorse of murder.
He was soon to be consumed by the war and was killed by a bullet. He was
only twenty five. During all those years at war he kept a long correspondence
with his mother, in the meanwhile he also wrote some 
searing poems that has
become a standpoint on morality of war and jingoism that comes with it.
searing poems that has
become a standpoint on morality of war and jingoism that comes with it.
Owen was aware of the opportunity to write about something very
important. He wrote to his mother: "Do you know what would hold me
together on a battlefield? The sense that I was perpetuating the language in
which Keats and the rest of them wrote!" There are moments of regrets too,
writing to mentor Sasoon and blaming him for his predicament. ‘You said it
would be a good thing for my poetry if I went back. That is my consolation for
feeling a fool. This is what the shells scream at me every time: "Haven't
you got the wits to keep out of this?"’
Over the years significance of Owen has only
increased, I read somewhere "Dying at twenty-five, he came to represent a
generation of innocent young men sacrificed - as it seemed to a generation in
unprecedented rebellion against its fathers - by guilty old men: generals,
politicians, war profiteers. Owen has now taken his place in literary history
as perhaps the first, certainly the quintessential, war poet." Here are
some his well known poems, must add I couldn’t understand few words.
Anthem for doomed youth
What
passing bells for those who die as cattle?
Only
the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only
the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can
patter out their hasty orisons.
No
mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor
any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The
shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And
bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What
candles may be held to speed them all?
Not
in the hands of boys, but in the eyes
Shall
shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The
pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their
flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And
each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds
Dulce et decorum est
Bent
double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed,
coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till
on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And
towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men
marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But
limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk
with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of
gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas!
Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting
the clumsy helmets just in time,
But
someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And
floundering like a man in fire or lime.
Dim
through the misty panes and thick green light,
As
under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In
all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He
plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If
in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind
the wagon that we flung him in.
And
watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His
hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If
you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come
gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene
as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of
vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My
friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To
children ardent for some desperate glory,
The
old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
(Dulce et decorum est Pro
patria mori is a famous ode by Horace claiming,
"Sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country.")
Insensibility
Happy
are men who yet before they are killed
Can
let their veins run cold.
Whom
no compassion fleers
Or
makes their feet
Sore
on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The
front line withers,
But
they are troops who fade, not flowers
For
poets’ tearful fooling:
Men,
gaps for filling:
Losses,
who might have fought
Longer;
but no one bothers.
And
some cease feeling
Even
themselves or for themselves.
Dullness
best solves
The
tease and doubt of shelling,
And
Chance’s strange arithmetic
Comes
simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
They
keep no check on armies’ decimation.
Happy
are these who lose imagination:
They
have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their
spirit drags no pack.
Their
old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache.
Having
seen all things red,
Their
eyes are rid
Of
the hurt of the colour of blood forever.
And
terror’s first constriction over,
Their
hearts remain small-drawn.
Their
senses in some scorching cautery of battle
Now
long since ironed,
Can
laugh among the dying, unconcerned.
Happy
the soldier home, with not a notion
How
somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And
many sighs are drained.
Happy
the lad whose mind was never trained:
His
days are worth forgetting more than not.
He
sings along the march
Which
we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The
long, forlorn, relentless trend
From
larger day to huger night.
We
wise, who with a thought besmirch
Blood
over all our soul,
How
should we see our task
But
through his blunt and lashless eyes?
Alive,
he is not vital overmuch;
Dying,
not mortal overmuch;
Nor
sad, nor proud,
Nor
curious at all.
He
cannot tell
Old
men’s placidity from his.
But
cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That
they should be as stones;
Wretched
are they, and mean
With
paucity that never was simplicity.
By
choice they made themselves immune
To
pity and whatever moans in man
Before
the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever
mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever
shares
The
eternal reciprocity of tears.
From
my scribble pad…
Flowerpeckers
It may not matter that you are there or
not
The calls will go on from one tree to
another
You may listen you may understand
It isn’t in the scheme of things
Nor does it matter
That the moments are songs that rise and
fall
In the fancy of little thing that dress
in feathers
Snippet: the other day
I was taking this lady for Nature walk, frustrated at not able to have long
sighting of birds, she says “birds should be put in cages so that we can have
good look!!” People are transforming into aliens, I reckon.
Darwin
was wrong in many ways about competition in animal world leading to evolution.
That has been hijacked by market to justify its incursions, which is
essentially weak validation of entitlement driven accruing, that characterizes
Indian society. I understand it is cooperation led adaptation than competition that is driving
nature towards evolution. Lichens are such amazing example.
