SAY THIS CITY HAS TEN MILLION SOULS – W H Auden

 SAY THIS CITY HAS TEN MILLION SOULS – W H Auden 

 

Say this city has ten million souls,

Some are living in mansions; some are living in holes;

Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.

 

Once we had a country and thought it fair,

Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:

We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

 

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,

Every spring it blossoms anew:

Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports can’t do that.

 

The consul banged the table and said:

‘If you’ve got no passport, you’re officially dead’:

But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

 

Went to a committee, they offered me a chair;

Asked me politely to return next year:

But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

 

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:

‘If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread’;

He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

 

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;

It was Hitler over Europe, saying: ‘They must die’;

O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

 

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,

Saw a door opened and a cat let in:

But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews.

 

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,

Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:

Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

 

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;

They had no politicians and sang at their ease:

They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

 

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,

A thousand winds and a thousand doors;

Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

 

Stood on a great plain in the snow;

Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:

Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

                                 ----

This poem holds faithfully reflects the truth of Jewish refugees suffering in Nazi regime in Germany. This poem was published in 1940 in volume entitle “Another Times” which exposed the state of Jews in Germany under Adolf Hitler’s rule just before the beginning of the World War II.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To the Indians who Died in Africa - T S Eliot

 To the Indians who Died in Arica – T S Eliot

 

The man’s destination is his own village,

His own fire, and his wife’s cooking;

To sit in front of his own door at sunset

And see his grandson, and his neighbour’s grandson

Playing in the dust together.

 

Scarred but secure, he has many memories

Which return at the hour of conversation,

(The warm or the cool hour, according to the climate)

Of foreign men, who fought in foreign places,

Foreign to each other.  

 

A man’s destination is not his destiny,

Every country is home to one man

And exile to another. Where a man dies bravely

At one with his destiny, that soil in his

Let his village remember.

 

This was not your land, or ours: but a village in the Midlands,

And one in the Five Rivers, may have the same graveyard.

Let those with a common purpose, action 

None the less fruitful if neither you nor we

Know, until the judgement after death,

What is the fruit of action? 

                 ----

Ecology - A K Ramanujan

 Ecology – A K Ramanujan

 

The day after the first rain,

for years, I would come home

in a rage,

 

for I could see from a mile away 

our three Red Champak trees 

had done it again,

 

had burst into flower and given Mother

her first blinding migraine

of the season

 

with their street-long heavy-hung

yellow pollen fog of a fragrance

no wind could sift,

 

no door could shut out from our black-

pillared house whose walls had ears 

and eyes,

 

scales, smells, bone-creaks, nightly

visiting voices, and were porous 

like us

 

but Mother, flashing her temper 

like her mother’s twisted silver,

grand children’s knickers

 

wet as the cold pack on her head,

would not let us cut down 

a flowering tree

 

almost as old as she, seeded,

she said, by a passing bird’s

providential droppings

 

to give her gods and her daughters 

and daughters’ daughters basketfuls 

of annual flower

 

and for one line of cousins

a dower of migraines in season.

 

               ---

 

 

 

Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood -- William Wordsworth

 Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood ⎯ William Wordsworth

The Child is father of the Man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

I

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore: ⎯

Turn wheresoe’ er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

II 

The Rainbow comes and goes,

And lovely is the Rose,

The moon do the with delight

Look round her when the heavens as bare,

Waters on a starry night

Are beautiful and fair;

The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where’ er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

III

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

And while the young lambs bound

As to the tabor’s sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:

A timely utterance gave that thought relief

And I again am strong:

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;

I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,

The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

And all the earth is gay;

Land and sea

Give themselves up to jollity,

And with the heart of May 

Doth every Beast keep holiday; ⎯

Thou Child of Joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy

Shepherd-boy!

IV 

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call

Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;

My heart is at your festival,

My heart is at you festival,

My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your lies, I feel⎯ I feel it all.

Oh evil day! If I were sullen

While Earth herself is adorning,

This sweet May-morning,

And the Children are culling

On every side,

In a thousand valleys far and wide,

Fresh flowers, with joy I hear;

And the Babe leaps up on his Mother’s arm:⎯

I hear, I hear, with joy I hear;

—But  there’s a Tree, of many, one

A single Field which I have looked upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone:

The Pansy at my feet

Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

V

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing Boy,

But He beholds the light and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man Perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

VI

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

And, even with something of a mother’s mind

And no unworthy aim,

The homely Nurse doth all she can

To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,

Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.

VII

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

A six years’ Darling of a pigmy size!

See, where ’mid work of his mother’s kisses,

Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,

With light upon him from his father’s eyes!

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,

Some fragment from his dream of human life,

Shaped  by himself with newly-learned art;

A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral;

And this hath now his heart,

And unto this he frames his song:

Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strive;

But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little Actor cons another part;

Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’

With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,

The Life brings with her in her equipage:

As if his whole vocation 

Were endless imitation.

VIII

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

Thy Soul’s immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep

Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,

Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,⎯

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest,

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;

Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the Day, a Master o’er a Slave,

A Presence which is not to be put by;

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight,

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

IX

O joy! That in our embers

Is something that doth live,

That nature yet members

What was so fugitive! 

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest:

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:⎯

Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realised,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature

Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:

But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

To perish never:

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland for we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

X

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

And let the young Lambs bound

As to the tabor’s sound!

We in thought will join your throng,

Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts today

Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;

In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;

In the soothing thoughts that spring 

Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hill, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

Tp live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o’ er man’s mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks tot he human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

—— 

ed. mastanappa puletipalli

Enterprise -- Nassim Ezekiel

 ENTERPRISE – NISSIM EZEKIEL

 

It started as a pilgrimage,

Exalting minds and making all

The burdens light. The second stage

Explored but did not test the call.

The sun beat down to match our rage.

 

We stood it very well, I thought,

Observed and put down copious notes

On things the peasants sold and bought,

The way of serpents and of goats,

Three cities where a sage had taught. 

 

But when the differences arose

On how to cross a desert patch,

We lost a friend whose stylish prose

Was quite the best of all our batch.

A shadow falls on us—and grows.

 

Another phase was reached when we 

Were twice attacked, and lost our way.

A section claimed its liberty

To leave the group. I tried to pray.

Our leader said he smelt the sea.

 

We noticed nothing as we went,

A straggling crowd of little hope,

Ignoring what the thunder meant,

Deprived of common needs like soap.

Some were broken, some merely bent.

 

When, finally, we reached the place,

We hardly knew why we were there.

The trip had darkened every face,

Our deeds were neither great nor rare.

Home is where we have to gather grace.

 

-----

 

ed. mastanappa puletipalli

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard -- Thomas Gray

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard – Thomas Gray

 

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness, and to me.

 

Now fades the glimmering landscapes on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

 

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,

Molest her ancient solitary reign.

 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade, 

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell forever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

 

The breezy call of incense breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed.

The cock’s thrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 

 

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire’s return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

 

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke:

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

 

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the Poor.

 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er grave,

Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour:—

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault

If Memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise.

Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

 

Can stories urn or animated bust 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting brath?

Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d 

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

 

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page

Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll;

Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul,

 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dak unfathom’d cave of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

 

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his fields withstood,

Same mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.

 

Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,

The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation’s eyes,

 

Their lot forbad nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;

For bad to wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

 

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

 

 

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,

Their sober wishes never learne’d o stray;

Along the cool sequester’d vale of life 

They Kept the noiseless tenor of tenor way.

 

Yet e’en these bones from insult to protect

Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

 

Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d Muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around the strews,

That teach the rustic moralist to die.

 

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d 

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

 

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires

E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

 

For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead,

Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;

If chance, by lonely contemplation led,

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

 

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,

Oft have we seen him at the deep of dawn

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn,

 

‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech

That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,

His listless length at noontide would he stretch,

And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

 

‘Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove.

Now drooping, woeful man, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.

 

Öne morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,

Along the heath, and near his favourite  tree;

Another came; nor yet beside the rill, 

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

 

‘The next with dirges due in sad array

Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,—

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay

Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’

 

                                    ----

 

 

 ed. mastanappa puletipalli