A Disarrayed Note on Poetry

[This is one of my earlier posts that I am republishing with a thought that some of my friends who missed it may feel like reading. This may be considered as an extension of the discussion on one of the Poems by David Matthews in Magna]


Now when I am no more writing poems, an abysmally void thought peeps into the mind, ‘Poetry does nothing to this world’. But somebody in the corner reminds me that it may be true that poetry may not make anything happen, but it survives. It may not help our world in a great sense, it may be fragile, but it extends in the wave of feeling, thought, and depth of relationship. Poetry may not have any practical consequence in its’ worst situation, yet it succeeds in the most difficult task of all – it “stretches the mind”.

During this dogmatic war of thoughts, two poets who instantly touch my inner breath are Pablo Neruda and Ramakanta Rath. Two great, one belonging to Chile, the Latin America and the other, native of Orissa of this subcontinent. My attempt here is not to produce an analogy of the poets. It is even true that I am incapable of putting them into the critical dissection of literary criticism. What I can do is what they do to me, i.e., stretch my mind, provoke me to feel not their words but the sculpture portrayed in these words. The cynicism of thought that words are the most inferior mode of communication stands unreal, when one starts reading Viente Poemas de Amo of Neruda, written way back in 1924, when he was a young boy of 20, still continuing his study at Santiago. He says “Everyday you play with the light of the Universe. Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and water…. You are like nobody since I love you…. … my words rained over you, stroking you…. Until I even believe that you own the universe…. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” Imagine these words spoken by ”Sri Radha”, as created by Rath.

Radha’s love for Krishna is unmatched. But for sometimes I was confused that what is so great about her love for Krishna. Perhaps, the greatness lies in loving someone, when you know that you won’t get him or her. Radha knew that Krishna could not be her alone. He has certain duties to perform in this world. In spite of knowing this fact, she loved him. The conscious mind which knows the truth of not getting, can not love. Perhaps this made her love for Krishna so great. The poet, whose words can reflect this thought, as if Radha herself is speaking, definitely has grown with the words, its nomenclature, semantics, and poetry, not being slave rather mastering them to make others feel that words are not the inferior mode of communication.

Rath’s creation of Sri Radha is considered to be a masterpiece of Oriya literature in this era. For long Radha’s feeling not only for Krishna but also her worldview, which was taken for granted becomes lively with Rath’s Sri Radha, where the protagonist (i.e. Radha) speaks herself.

A poet writes in the far south of America in mid 1920’s in his youthful years, and the other writes in a corner of this subcontinent in early 1990’s in his 50’s. Yet, the resonance created in these words take the same form, radiate the same feeling, penetrate the soul in same fashion. One writes in Spanish, the other in Oriya. What else can be more binding which withstands time, region, culture and language. For instance, when Neruda say’s

To night I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, ‘the night is shattered’
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

How truly it can be understood for Radha waiting for Krishna to come to Yamuna. Like all other times he does not keep unto the time. He enjoys making Radha restless, making her wait, when he knows that how painful it would be to wait. When the anger, sadness, and love all mingle in the same eyes, how it can be better expressed then

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How can one not have loved her great still eyes.
To night I can write the saddest lines
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

When the waiting grows to passion and Radha is at the verge of breaking down, that somewhere she hears the music of the magical flute. She disbelieves herself, as it happened several times before. And the verses go like this;

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shatter and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

Every time it happens that Krishna plays his flute somewhere in the distance and does not appear. Waiting becomes Radha’s destiny, and perhaps she may be saying it better in Neruda’s words.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
……….
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

How true it is for Neruda, that true it is for Rath. The pain is same for them, their characters, their readers. Poetry releases the pain and that is why it unites. But, whom? The characters like million others on the street, in the slum, in the hills and mountains, in the desert, who came as poetry through the words. May they be from Chile or Mexico, may be from Africa, Vietnam or Ireland; all similar, in their suffering, in their poverty, in their pain. We resemble the pastoralist in Chile with the leather worker in Mexico to a rickshaw-puller in Calcutta to a freedom fighter in Ireland, in the verses of the poets, like the one of Neruda,

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
And these the last verse that I write for her.