Poems dealing with animals
This week I will look at poems that deal with animals, but from an
unusual perspective. All three poems deal with a sense of loss, that
draws our minds to rather depressing aspects of, not human, but natural,
conditions.
The first is perhaps the most familiar in terms of its subject
matter, and indeed looks at conditions which man has created. It is by
S. Pathmanathan, translated as usual by himself, and deals with a side
effect of the destruction wrought by war. The scene should be an
unfamiliar one, but it has been all too common in recent years in the
North, and the writer brings to the experience, of coming back home
after enforced exile, a touching mixture of bewilderment and the
assumption that life simply has to just go on.
The third verse introduces the main subject of the poem, the missing
dog. The writer recreates vividly the reactions of the creature when his
master went away, probably to a safe haven nearby, to escape an expected
incursion. He captures too the attempt of the dog to join his master,
and the latter's need to fend him off, doubtless because the dog might
endanger the refugees by focusing attention on their hiding place.
The poem brings alive the minutiae of the suffering caused by war.
The abandoned lost animal is simply a tiny element in the equation,
which includes damage and displacement and missing persons too, but the
sense of loss, and the bemusement about what else might have been done,
is expressed with great pathos - not least because of the ironic title.
The release
I returned
after a six-month exile
to find to my surprise
my house standing, the roof intact,
with the exception of some stolen items
our belongings safe
Thank god no one stepped
on booby traps.
I look around and I miss something:
yes, the jubilant welcome of Blackie.
My eyes scan the deserted homesteads
and the shrubs
that day and the following days.
Disappointed my mind darts back
to that cold October evening
When I left my hearth and home
with the young and old,
you stood sentinel over
the house I abandoned
From the sanctuary I paid fleeting visits
seeing me you leaped up in joy
licked me, snatched from my hands
the goodies I had brought
running round and round
you communicated to me
the pangs of separation
The third time you followed me
Defiantly, steeling my heart
I chased you
pelting stones
Today
memories haunting me
I gaze and gaze
at the stray dogs that shun human beings
conditioned by the shelling and firing
heard in the wilderness
You are not there
but your memory haunts me
when I think that you perished
defending the house I abandoned
I feel the pangs of guilt
I am ashamed of my cowardice
my pettiness
as I take stock of the damaged houses
the lost possessions
the missing members
the displaced persons
My balance sheet shows
a debt
bankrupt
I could ask you for a write- off
but
you're not there
only your memory
haunts me still.
Ariyawansa Ranaweera is a highly idiosyncratic writer, who presents
the world askew, to draw attention significant if generally forgotten
aspects of life. His subject here is something we see all the time, the
return of an evening of birds to roost for the night in their regular
resting place.
I have often, when out in the countryside, against the Matale hills,
over the Kalu Ganga, watched flocks of birds flying in formation to what
I have thought of as their homes.
It had never occurred to me before I read this poem to think about
those that did not return, for whatever reason, having set off hopefully
to forage in the morning. Ranaweera's poem, translated by E M G
Edirisinghe, takes our minds to the missing, unnoticed to the horde, of
significance only to a grieving mate.
The anthromophormization, establishing links between us and the
birds, first by referring to the lack of concern of the majority, then
by focusing on the sense of personal loss, reminds us too of how little
individual loss counts in the great scheme of things, how massive it
looms in the hearts of those affected.
A failure to return
In the evening
Every bird wings its way to sleep
Perched among the leaves
Atop the trees
Prattling for a while
On what and what not occurred that day
Dreaming of the day to follow
Huddled in their feathers
They fall asleep
Though one of the flock
Did not make it to the nest that evening
They do not notice it
In their thousands
They are in deep comfortable sleep
Except for one lone she-bird
Waiting without sleep, without words
Finally I look at one of the most chilling poems I have read. It is
an early work by Anne Ranasinghe, when she put down simple if always
interesting perceptions about the world she saw, bureaucrats in the
'Colombo Secretariat', a suffering bull in 'Plead Mercy'. These were
accompanied usually by a call to thought, but that could be passed over
in comparison with the strength of the visual imagery.
This poem is different, in that it focuses on what can only be
described as actual evil, the pleasure the unthinking can take in
inflicting suffering for its own sake.
The first verse is almost cinematic in the way it sets the scene, the
idyll of a beach darkened by words such as 'crash' and 'drown'. The
focus then moves to the writer, unable to intervene, as most of us do
not, for whatever reason, which usually boils down into diffidence,
unwillingness to speak - until it is too late.
When I used to teach the poem, I used to draw comparisons with what
takes place during ragging, when what is presented as play to begin with
allows licence for the worst excesses of human wickedness, sometimes due
to perverted psychologies, sometimes due simply to the joy of power that
feeds on vulnerability. My students seemed to understand, but I fear
that the general behaviour did not change.
On the beach
Neither the crash
Of the morning waves
Nor the sunlight singing of wind can drown
His yelps
Three boys, one puppy
A rope
Torture on the beach.
His agony rips
Dark holes in your eyes
And helpless anger
Twists in your hand as
The rope nooses tighter
The thin stick beats harder -
Then they throw sand.
The sand fills his eyes
The sand fills his nose
The sand fills his ears
And though your tears
Taste salt in my mouth
The alien years
Have rotted my tongue
Into immobility
And people swim
In the sunlit sea
It's an ordinary day
They cry let's play
At burying him
And then
They bury him.
|