More Meanderings And My Favourite Poem

I have always been drawn to beautiful language.And what better manifestation of that than Poetry. When I try to recollect when the fascination began ,I realise that it's been there for quite a while , right from when I was a school kid. Back then though, as far as I remember , I liked it because of the rhythm and the rhyme, and just because it was a little different and I understood it better than the other kids. A silly reason , but one that has sustained my interest over all these years ,long enough for me to begin to enjoy it for it's actual beauty and wonder it inspires in so many.

It always came easily to me. Poetry, that is. And I took to it all the more for that.I loved the metaphors and the meandering ,the eloquent descriptions that were meant, if only, to evoke vivid images in one's mind. I loved that I could get it when no one else seemed to it. Lol...I loved impressig my teachers..This one in particular especially...He was young and really handsome (your eyes are popping out..yeah I know...In madras...but he was) and spoke impeccable english in a deep baritone(which was good enough reason for me to fall in love with him - he turned out subsequently to be a womanising bastard...but hey you can't be perfect...lol) and we were all totally spell bound when he read out a poem. (lol...So mister Godfrey sir , if you ever read this...Thanks..You sparked my interest..).

(I remember reading Shelley and Walter Scott and all the nice ballad-y stuff , which had such nice rhyme schemes and everything, way back in 6th standard. In fact , some years I remember solely by the poems we did in class...How weird is that..lol..I never somehow took to indian poets until very much later..I guess 'cos translations did'nt really rhyme..lol..anyway, I got over that...Thankfully.)

Eventually , my liking for poetry ceased to have anything to do the person spouting it and became a more of a pride thing. Yeah , well , you see..since all of my friends were total geeks , and I guess in that respect I got left behind , they would be the ones explaining stuff to me. The math or the physics. And my way of helping them back , my means of restoring my image everytime I needed their help , was to explain language.

(Uhh...we needed each other's help 'cos in 11th and 12th we had such horrible teachers in school that it was better that we tried to figure things out by ourselves than to inflict the torture on ourselves ,and endanger our future thinking capabilities by letting them have anything to do with the injecting of any kind of information or ideas into our brain...)

Perhaps it was just that my friends had no patience with it. I don't know. They seemed to dislike it so much. English was a chore , just something to be gotten over with. And Poetry to them was the worst of it , It was something to be mugged up if need be and thought about just enough to answer questions such as "What do you think the poet means when he says..?" And even , then it would be me who would be frantically contacted the previous night (no one ever studies english except then dummies) before an exam to come up with answers to the obvious questions.

And I was the authority.Well ,that is to say, in my class, in school. Ok so you did'nt come to me when you could'nt figure out a math problem , but I was the official english tutor for the entire class. And that being the case , and my pride being at stake , I could and would never bullshit. I'd think about things , what they meant from different points of view and everything and give the geeks their fair exchange for all the times I needed their help. Maybe that was even why we became friends , at least at first it began as a symbiotic relationship. (Isn't that true vishnu??)

However, even after I left school and after my first year in college , when I was no longer obligated to read poetry , I found myself increasingly gravitating towards it. I cannot claim that my exposure is deep or even wide. But what I've read so far , has left me thinking , musing ,pondering for days on end. Just like other things I've read , I guess , only the difference being that this drew me on a more emotional level than the stuff in books.

Some poems have haunted me. And I can't help repeating the lines over and over again to myself, like the tune of a song that gets stuck in one's head.Because they have struck such a chord. Some have been so cynical as to have left me quite disturbed. Some, I've even found, can be a source of so much mirth. (like this poem I put up on one of my earlier posts by E.E cummings).

But the poetry I like best is the soulful, romantic kind. I'm a sucker for it and can lap it up in quantities that many people find quite nauseating. In the beginning ,I was'nt particularly discriminating. After a point though , you learn to see what makes a Poem brilliant , when in fact it maybe saying something quite similar to any one of your dime a dozen pop ballady things.(uh..Can't believe I actually mentioned both in the same sentence...Gods of poetry , please do not caste me into eternal hell...lol)

So, yeah I totally trip (A friend of mine would have me say "Get off to.."..lol) on Shakespeare , Byron , Yeats , Browning..The acknowledged and established greats. But if there was one poem , that I had to pick , that was my All Time Favourite...The one that really moved me , that I love , that I recite in my dreams because it haunts me so much , it would have to be "Tonight I can Write The Saddest Lines..." By Pablo Neruda...I've only read one compilation of his poetry...the one from which this poem comes. But I know I will probably love it all.

Anyway, I've been reading this poem a lot offlate for some reason. And I can't get over how beautiful it is. I don't know if you will see in it , what I do , or what loads of other people probably have...But there are so many things about this poem that I relate to so well...Anyway , no description of mine will do justice to it so I will just let you read it ,if you will..

Tonight 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.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to a pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.This is all.

In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

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.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain,but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

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

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Hmmm...I guess poetry is an oft repeated subject on my blog and I suppose I might have even mentioned the same things I've said here , in a previous post. Bear with me though , It's just a reflection of how "into" it , I am.

I just re-read this poem and I can't get over how awesome it is...Anyway , offlate I've taken up reading poetry again , I had stopped for a while in between...So , well , if you have any suggestions...