*Sigh*

*sigh*

I wish to write nothing today. I want to put up these long forgotten poems, though .. don't ask me why...


(I THINK we did this one posted below with that half-FRENCH teacher, who was hardly 22-23 and had a nasal voice ... her english classes were drab .. I rem doing "The Highway Man" with her .. and still can't help grinning at the memory of her nasal "Tlot tlot".. as she read out the poem in class ...hey, u rem arps, all her classes began and ended with .. *nasal voice* "Vaishaali .. please open ur workbook..".. n all she discussed was the answers to the questions...as vaishali answered impromptu ..pretending to be reading off her previous day's homework :P (Vaishali, by chance or choice, would always sit right under her nose!) )

I just realised that we wasted huge literary works .. with her .... anyhow .. here is this one...

The Solitary Reaper

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

-- William Wordsworth


And this one !!... With our very own and beloved Usha Ma'am :) .. I still vividly recall her recital of this one (the stern- dramatic look in her eye ..when she read out the khadoos neighbour's dialogue "Good fences make good neighbours")

MENDING WALL

by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."


************************

and ohh.. this one below !! ... again, her voice and expression are clearly etched in my memory :) .. as she would read out the bit when the villagers taunted Gulzaman- and challenged his manhood, for he was childless..

'GuIzaman, where is the son?

(this one is my favourite - coz rem she had a peculiar way of pronouncing "n" :D .. that was so very adorable! )
this is the story of an old shepherd who does not have a son. His kinsmen (fellow shepherds) pass cruel remarks at his manhood, challenging his virility! And he silently bears it all ... never expressing the pain and torment that he goes through..
One day, when it rained/snowed heavily, all the sheep and expectant mothers (ewes) owned by his kinsmen, weakened by the cold and poorly fed on wet grassand gave birth to dead (or 'still-born') children... and they could be seen lamenting the loss of their sheep...
However, since Gulzaman had taken good care of his sheepfold - had kept it warm and snug with hay etc .. his own sheep are warm and secure. The expectant mother sheep (ewe) in his fold .. delivers a healthy baby, which is alive!! (that it will survive is indicated by the fact that it pees after a while!) .... Gulzaman, who has taken care of all his sheep like his own family (children), is proud of this moment ... it is nothing short of an achievement for him ... for him, it is like delivering his own baby boy ..
and at this proud moment, overcome with emotions, he holds that new born high up in the air, and declares victoriously to himself as much as to the others , "This is my son" :)



Gulzaman's Son

Climbing his tortuous way from Kanzalwan,
GuIzaman leaves the river, buckwheat harvests
and slopes dark with conifers. His breath comes
in a half-choked whistle, the air uncertain
whether to burst through the lungs or whoosh
out of the mouth.

He doesn't remain with his people now,
among the sheepfolds and high-pasture huts.
They rag him, 'GuIzaman, where is the son?
Can we help?' 'Here comes the randiest ram
in the valley!' They're not funny, these jibes
at his virility. So each sundown he leaves
for the river to sleep in a stone-breaker's
pine-hut, till at dawn the sheep call him.

GuIzaman strains up the last hundred feet
to reach the fold. Expectant ewes
seek shelter from the wind under the lee
of limestone walls. He sees his kinsmen,
bearded and gaunt and broad-boned as himself,
brooding over a dead kid. Rain starts hissing.
There has been such heavy sleet the week past
that in the sheepfolds new-borns have been dying.
With the mothers wind-weakened and fed
on wet grass, the lambs are still-born, flopping
inert on the earth. Ewes don't even lick
them and probe for hidden embers of life
with their raking tongues. Broken, they turn
on their sides like sacks of crushed ice.

The turf is sodden but his own fold
is a small den made snug by bales of hay.
His ewe snuggles up to him and bleats
recognition, a thin tremolo of love
blanketed by gutturals of pain.
Relations crowd, darkening the doorway,
as with heavily-greased arms GuIzaman
examines her. Yes, the lamb is on its way!
An hour later it is there, quavery-legged
and wet and uncertain about
its rickety, four-pronged hold on the earth.
Shortly it pees. Allah be praised, now it will live.
It cannot die of a chill in the stomach.
Either the doorway has been cleared, or clouds
have been parted for an instant by the sun.
GuIzaman picks the dun-coloured lamb and holds
it to his chest. 'This', he says, 'this is my son.'
- Keki N. Daruwalla

(Pls note that I had first posted this poem without caring to mention the author! Thanks to Ashish, who promptly asked me this doubt ... I realised that I never knew the name of the poet! googled it up, n discovered that it was written by one Mr. Daruwalla... Thanks :D )
BTW: Gulzaman's Son was my first experience of Blank Verse or Free Verse (a verse which does not have any rhyme) .. We later did The Mending Wall and others in the same league of course ...

.. Now, that reminds me of an Archie Strip that I read in the paper today ...

Moose ( frowning at a poet's recital of his composition) :: That was a Poem? It didn't even rhyme!
Archie (rolling eyes at his ignorance): Moose, that was "Free Verse"!
Moose: Good, who'd pay for a poem that doesn't even rhyme!
:D :D :D :P :P

*sigh again*

Ciao ...