A swarm of locusts in Mexico
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. - Albert Einstein
We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us. - Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941),known by the honorific Gurudev, was a Bengali poet, novelist, musician, painter and playwright who reshaped Bengali literature and music. As author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he was the first non-European who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. His poetry in translation was viewed as spiritual, and this together with his mesmerizing persona gave him a prophet-like aura in the west. His "elegant prose and magical poetry" still remain largely unknown outside the confines of Bengal.
For the dialogue recorded in 1930 of the conversation between Einstein and Tagore, go to intentBlog
Molting
If I should reveal
my blood to you I would dry
up and blow away
in the desert wind
an empty husk of locust
left behind when hordes
arise and darken
the day with awful intent,
searching for manna.
November 20, 2009 7:54 PM
Christopher, to some locust are manna from the sky. (Image) The sky is burning with the suns fire. The dunes strech for longer than the eye can see. The ground is parched. (Reality) The food has been gone for three days. The water ran out the night before. (Manna) From the horison a black smudge appears; rapidly turning into an undulating chittinous wall. At first horrifing, this seen turns to salvation. From me. He ment well.
ReplyDeleteYes, mr Well. It matters if you have something they want or not. They will strip you clean if you have something they can take. You may eat them, I suppose, but I am not sure that every species is edible.
ReplyDeleteIn the end this is still life eating life and the one eaten is bound to protest and resist a little, claiming in some way, "No fair!" It is assuredly not fair, certainly a conundrum.
Life eats pieces of me on a daily basis. This may not be fair, but it is... Hopefully I grow just enough that the scales don't tip. I'm pretty sure that most if not all species of locust are edible. Having said that I wouldn't want to be put in a situation where I have to eat them just to survive for another few hours.
ReplyDeleteDon't take what I said as me missing the point of the poem. I just get cought up in the ideas that pop into my head when I read, or see somthing. I like this one. It invokes big images in my head, and hits that ouch/ick place in my hart.
He ment well ( not mr Well, far from it)
I am not in the business of demanding you get my meaning. At that level I don't have meaning. I don't even remember what I was thinking of when I wrote the poem if anything. Lots of times my poems drive themselves into the corners where they come to rest. I am quite happy with that process.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure you are far from Mr. Well. It may be you that has not yet realized how disheveled the rest of us really are...
So much of my angst disappeared the day I figured out the people around me were often worse off than me in all the varieties of ways that can be so. We are all bozos on the bus.