Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Movement

      “The world is always in movement” — V.S. Naipaul

SOURCE

“I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change – within himself, not on the outside.”— Joseph Brodsky

      Midweek Motif ~ Movement

I was listening to a Bengali song the other day when suddenly I heard the voice of the words in a different note I was not familiar in my childhood. I was aware and amazed how the song writer had captivated a ‘movement’ all around him. In the song the focus is mainly on a plant, engrossed in the bliss of life merrily singing of its motion. It’s a Tagore song. Here is a translation which I did:

River dear, in a fit of frenzy you rush at will

I, a dazed magnolia, insomniac, sit fragrance-filled

Ever quiescent, I keep my deep treading concealed

In each sprouting leaf and flower trail my path reveals

River dear, motion-thrilled you wildly race

Losing yourself in course endless   

Ineffable is my rhythm; a life’s stir towards light

The sky knows its bliss as do the silent stars of the night

Movement is a layered word to me; both its noun and verb forms. What picture does it create in your mind when you see the word?

To me the word immediately sketches the image of physiological posture of pain and suffering of ageing. Then on second thought it becomes a voice of that organized effort to bring about or resist changes in the society.

Let’s see how the word speaks to you.

Souls’ Festival

by Matsuo Basho

souls’ festival

today also there is smoke

from the crematory

The City In The Sea

by Edgar Allan Poe

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around by lifting winds forgot

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

         

No rays from the holy heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town;

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently-

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-

Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls-

Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls-

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-

Up many and many a marvellous shrine

Whose wreathed friezes intertwine

The viol the violet and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

                                 (The rest is here)

The Owls

by Charles Baudelaire

UNDER the overhanging yews, 

The dark owls sit in solemn state, 

Like stranger gods; by twos and twos 

Their red eyes gleam.

 They meditate.

 

Motionless thus they sit and dream 

Until that melancholy hour 

When, with the sun's last fading gleam, 

The nightly shades assume their power.

 

From their still attitude the wise 

Will learn with terror to despise 

All tumult, movement, and unrest; 

For he who follows every shade, 

Carries the memory in his breast, 

Of each unhappy journey made.

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        (Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be - Masks)