- Once upon a time – Gabriel Okara
Gabriel Okara’s poem ‘Once Upon
a Time’ deals with the artificial manners and relationships of the people
of the present time. According to the poet, the past is better than the present
because there was true love, faith and sincerity among the people in the past.
But in the present all these noble qualities of the erstwhile have disappeared.
Hence the poet of this poem wants to relive the past once again.
The
poem ‘Once Upon a Time’ is written as though a father is talking to his son who
is an embodiment of innocence. He says to his son that once upon a time, the
people used to laugh with their hearts and eyes. There was genuineness in what
they said and did. But in the present, there is only out ward “laughing with
their teeth” with out any feeling or expression in their “ice-block-cold” eyes.
Now-a-days people have become money-minded and naturally they develop relation
with the rich. The poet says ironically, people shake hands with others very
mechanically and artificially while their left hands search others’ empty
pockets.
Guests
are no longer welcomed in these days. They are given warm reception only once
or twice. If any guest visits more than one time the doors are shut on his face
itself. In this material and artificial
world, the poet has learnt many things— especially wearing many faces like
putting on many dresses which can suit the occasions. One has to have ‘home face’ ‘office face’,
‘street face’, ‘cocktail face’ and so on….with a fixed smile as the smile seen
in the portrait. Thus, the superficiality, hypocrisy and artificiality have
become the way of the world.
In
this poem ‘Once Upon a Time’, the poet-cum-speaker has also learnt laughter
only with his teeth; the art of saying ‘goodbye’ when he means ‘good riddance’,
‘Glad to meet you’ when he is not very glad; and ‘Nice talking to you’ when he
really bored of somebody.
The poet concludes his poem as he wants to be like his
son (baby in the cradle) with all the exemplary personification of innocence.
He hates himself as he becomes the victim of the ‘present’ showing ‘the bare
fangs of a snake’. Towards the end of the poem, the poet appeals to his son to
show him how to smile / laugh wholeheartedly. It is a desire to relive the past
is nothing but a yearning for the innocence, faithfulness and sincerity.
- The Man He Killed – Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy’s
poem ‘The Man He killed’ is superficially simple and uncomplicated
composition. The poem is, in fact, a very skilful and heavily-laden with irony
and evoking interest in use of colloquialism.
The title of the poem is slightly odd, as Hardy uses the third-person
pronoun ‘He’, though the poem is narrated in the first person. The ‘He’ of the title and ‘I’ of the poem is
evidently a soldier attempting to explain and perhaps justify his killing of
another soldier in an ancient inn.
In the first stanza, the narrator establishes the
common ground between himself and his victim. They have shared hospitality
together in an ancient inn in favourable circumstances. This idea is in striking contrast to that of
the second stanza where the circumstances in which the two men did meet. “Ranged as infantry” suggests that the men
are not natural foes but have been “ranged” i.e. set them against each
other. The phrase "I shot at him as
he at me" indicates the similarity of their situations.
In the third stanza, the narrator gives his reason for
shooting his supposed enemy. The
conversational style of the poem enables Hardy to repeat the word “because”,
implying hesitation and doubt on the part of the narrator. He cannot easily think of a reason for
killing a soldier, when it strikes he simply says, “Because he was my foe”. But
this reason is utterly unconvincing. The
speaker has already made it clear in which the men were foes: an artificial
enmity created by some selfish politicians.
The phrases like “Of course” and “That's clear enough” are deliberately
ironic. The enmity is not a matter; of course, the claim is far from “clear” to
the reader.
The real reason for the victim’s enlistment in the
army, like the narrator’s, is far from being connected with patriotic idealism
and belief in the country’s cause. The
soldier’s enlistment in the army was partly whimsical “Off-hand like” and
partly the result of economic necessity. Both of them are enlisted in the army
because they are unemployed and had already sold off their possessions.
The narrator concludes the poem with a repetition of
the contrast between his treatment of the man he killed and how he might have shared
hospitality with him in other circumstances, or even been ready to extend
charity to him. This is rather a bitter poem showing the stupidity of war, and
demolishing belief in the patriotic motives of those who confront one another
in battle. The narrator finds no good
reason for his action for killing of a soldier of the enemy army camp. The short lines, simple rhyme scheme, and everyday
language make the poem almost like a nursery-rhyme.
- Where the mind is
without fear…. Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath
Tagore, who contributed immensely to giving a modern India a place on the world literary
scene, was a multi-faceted personality. As a poet, a dramatist, a short story
writer and a novelist, he wrote primarily in Bengali, but translated a number
of his own works into English and in the process, he wrote them afresh. The
poem “where the mind is without fear….” is a political lyric, and it was
included in the Gitanjali from one of
Tagore’s Bengali works much earlier. It is one of the most popular and effective
lyrics of Tagore.
In
this inspiring poem the poet prays to God for the spiritual emancipation of his
country. True freedom lies in a full and virtuous living. Therefore, the poet
prays to God that his countrymen may be fearless, truthful, rational,
God-fearing, noble and generous. Knowledge should be free and there should be
no division of caste, creed or nationality. It is to be noted that the “heaven
of freedom” for which the poet prays is not a heaven of political and economic
freedom but of spiritual freedom from fear, narrow-mindedness and evil desires.
Rabindranath Tagore expresses his innate love and
patriotic feelings in this poem. He prays to God to make his country perfect as
he has many wishes for his ideal country. He wants that the people should not
have any kind of fear and they should live their life with self-respect. In his
ideal country everybody should get free knowledge and the people will live
together with unity. The reason of their mind should be truthful and constantly
strive for perfection. The people of his ideal country should not become slaves
of bad habits but have clarity of thoughts. Further, he says that the world has
not to be broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls. Thus, he prays to God
for freedom for his country.
Q. How does the poetess Maya Angelou focus on the plight
of the women in the male
dominated society in her poem ‘Woman
Work’?
- Woman’s work – Maya
Angelou
MAYA
Angelou a poet, an essayist, a lecturer and predominantly civil rights
activist, is among the most distinguished African-American writers devoted to
women’s lives and their identities in a male dominated society. Race, family
and kinship are the major concerns in her works. Maya Angelou’s poem “Woman work” is a very
domestic poem depicting the typical routine life of woman who performs her
daily responsibilities effectively and then yearns for a small break amidst the
elements of nature to give her strength and comfort.
As
a wife she has to perform many responsibilities. She has to tend her children,
mend their clothes, mop the floor and do some shopping for their meals. Then
she has to fry chicken, dry the baby, feed animals, weed off the garden, press
the shirts, dress the tots, cut the cane, pick the cotton, nurse the sick and
clean up her whole house to make it beautiful and appealing.
The
exploitation of the women is the major concern of this poem. It can not be
denied that among all sections of the people women are the most exploited in
this male dominated society. Women are treated as slaves without considering
their hard work in raising the family and being helpful in every stage of man’s
success.
The drudgery of her routine life makes her life so
monotonous and prosaic; but the woman in this poem is an idealist and wants to
go in the lap of nature expecting her relief and comfort. She helplessly calls
forth the fiercest wind to take her away to distant lands where she can get
some rest. She frantically asks
snowflakes to cover her with icy kisses to rest at least tonight. Though she
sacrifices every thing for the welfare the man she does not claim anything is
her own. The sun, rain, curving sky,
mountain, oceans, star shine, moon glow, leaf and stone are only things
belonging to her. So that she can fly there, to forget her neck-breaking routine,
and feel the freshness and coolness of natural elements to stimulate her body
and soul once again to perform the next day’s duties effectively. Thus, the
plight of the woman is depicted in this poem with a touch of human concern.
- An Old Woman – Arun
Kolatkar
‘An
Old Woman’ is a short poem extracted from the collection of poems, ‘Jejuri’,
written by Arun Kolatkar. The poem is about an old woman who entreats the
speaker (the poet) to help her. The speaker is, at the beginning, indifferent
to this poor old woman and refused to offer any help. But seeing at her
miserable state and pitiable look of old woman bring change in his response
towards the woman.
In
this poem ‘An Old Woman’, narrates a common experience. At every tourist place
you will meet a self-appointed tourist guide like this old woman. Usually they
pester you for money (alms) and they even promise you to offer some service as
a tourist guide to the money you give them. Many tourists give them something
to get rid of them.
The
poem ‘An Old Woman’ begins when poet visits a hill temple of western
Maharastra. There he comes across an old woman who grabs his sleeve and wants
fifty paisa. She promises to take him to the horseshoe shrine. The tourist
tells her that he had already visited the place and there is no need of any
tourist guide. He requested her to let him go alone. But she persists and keeps
on pestering him ‘like a burr’. The poet turns to face the old woman to end up
their association ‘with an air of finality’ to ‘end the farce’. He decides with
an air of firmness to get rid of her annoyance but her question “what else can
an old woman do on hills as wretched as these?” stops him in his tracks and
think…..
“You look right at the sky
Clear through the bullet-holes
She has for eyes.”
The
narrator is shocked by looking at her pitiable pathetic condition. The old
woman’s eyes are just two gaping holes filled with empty air, with the hills
and the sky. The cracks begin around her eyes, spreading beyond her skin. In
the course of time “the hills crack, the temples crack and the sky falls with a
plate-glass clatter around” but the old woman remains intact because she is
already a ‘shatter-proof’ and nothing happens to her.
The poem begins with a common experience, but ends in
a revelation. The old woman is an ordinary woman but she is the ‘shatter-proof’
of the degradation of humanity. The poem presents true picture of pathetic
condition of the woman familiar to those who visit holy places to seek divine
blessings without caring the poor and the downtrodden. It is in true sense the
hollowness of humanity and religion. With all these self-realization the poet
reduced himself so small in the hands of the old woman.
******