by R.Seshan
[box]Simply what happens when a poem gets written? R.Seshan tells us about the writing of one. Read on to know about the captivating thought process. [/box]Radhika and I were in Conoor, just below Ooty, part of the Nilgiris, the Blue Mountains. The Bungalow was typically English, perched on one side of the winding road, the French windows opening on to the valley thousands of feet below. Breathtaking, cool and misty.
We entered through a white-painted wicket gate on to the long winding road ahead to Lamb’s Rock. The land fell away from the road on either side, with tea gardens occasionally visible in the distance. But the jungle was closer, with not a human in sight. Gnarled trees embraced the road and it grew darker in daylight. Silence closed in, except for the hiss and rustle of the leaves flipped by a cold wind and the grating sound of bark rubbing against bark.
Here was a never-before-encountered, cold and misty jungle.
I clutched the fevered bundle to my chest and fled,
The blood that stained my hand was red,
The road wound round and round each bend,
The trees grew old and sad and bent.
Words are beautiful things. You can touch and feel them with your tongue and mouth. Hard as rock, smooth as pebbles. The mouthed vibrations tingle in your throat and brain. You can take words and string them together like a garland or hammer them together to form a sword’s keen edge. You can hurt and rip and maim people with words or use them like a gentle benediction, a soothing balm. You can create a world with words or see the world in a word. Words are beautiful things… they are the raw material of poetry.
The vehicle is the music, the rhyme or rhythm on which the words are borne, intermingled to form a stream, gentle or swift, whispered or shouted, bearing the idea, the dream, the vision, the memories of people and events like a triumphant swelling tide to a receptive mind.
The rustling sound of wind on leaves,
The horrible echo of my tortured feet,
The tingling of my spine foretold,
Of spirits dark and fear took hold,
There was life here and a death-like cold.
The pain struck first, the talons next,
The shadows hovered overhead,
The bundle fell from nerveless hands,
I gave one last sightless glance.
The soul of poetry is the idea, the dream, the vision, the memories of people and events, cloaked in the barest of diaphanous words, each idea, dream, vision and memory to be completed and acknowledged in the reader’s mind.
… I rose above the forest green,
Viewed below the innocent scene,
And in the silvery moonlit night
There was little fear and just no pain.
It started with the title. I knew I would call it “NIGHTMARE”. The fleeting fear I felt would be magnified and the jungle that merely threatened, would be made macabre. This I knew.
From where came “the fevered bundle”, I do not know, or the blood. I was hugging something precious. Was it my child? Bleeding?
How and when did the jungle road become an allegory for life’s journey? The brooding trees, mist, darkness and sounds substitutes for the tangle of fears through which we hack our way in life or become trapped?
Above all, when did the intellectual idea of overcoming fear through perspective intrude? Soaring above the jungle, now moonlit and innocent. Was I dead and free from fear or free from fear and alive?
In the labyrinth of the human mind, in its convoluted paths and spaces lies an awesome power. The arrogance of creation is tempered by the knowledge that the act of creation is a dance with this power. As the rhythm and the words match the vision, you can feel it in the thrill which goes through the spine and the hair standing on the nape of your neck.
That is the poet’s reward.
Pic : Vani Viswanathan
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