More poetry by Arkaydass Chaudhary: Please comment!!!
Nobody Knows
Nobody knows,
Not even myself
As to why the lush green leaf
Fell apart from the mighty tree.
Some say, the trunk was tender
Others say, the villain was the west wind
But everyone was silently sad
To see it lost
Among a plethora of dry leaves
Tossing their heads below
On the swollen sod.
Nobody knows,
Not even myself
As to why suddenly
My vision got blurred
And I could not locate
My favourite starlet
Through the window
Even during starry-nights.
My mom terms it
The handiwork of an evil-spirit
That eyed on me.
Nobody knows,
Not even myself
As to why the poet
Stopped composing
The last couplet of the great epic,
Some say, he has gone crazy
Others say, his fountain-pen
Was broken,
Yet some others say that
His heart was broken.
Nobody knows,
Not even myself
As to why the cuckoo went dumb
Some say, the Spring ditched him
Others blame it on Winter,
But all wondered
How was it that last year
He sang full-throated
When there was neither Spring nor Winter?
Nobody knows,
Not even myself
As to why they parted
Supposedly on a fine morning
With throats choked and eyes moist.
Some say, they parted silently
Others say, they did mutter some words
Of the nature of suppressed whispers
When she turned her face
And he looked downward.
Everybody looked askance
But no one asked.
Nobody knows,
Not even myself
As to why the lush green leaf
Fell apart from the mighty tree.
Some say, the trunk was tender
Others say, the villain was the west wind
But everyone was silently sad
To see it lost
Among a plethora of dry leaves
Tossing their heads below
On the swollen sod.
Nobody knows,
Not even myself
As to why suddenly
My vision got blurred
And I could not locate
My favourite starlet
Through the window
Even during starry-nights.
My mom terms it
The handiwork of an evil-spirit
That eyed on me.
Nobody knows,
Not even myself
As to why the poet
Stopped composing
The last couplet of the great epic,
Some say, he has gone crazy
Others say, his fountain-pen
Was broken,
Yet some others say that
His heart was broken.
Nobody knows,
Not even myself
As to why the cuckoo went dumb
Some say, the Spring ditched him
Others blame it on Winter,
But all wondered
How was it that last year
He sang full-throated
When there was neither Spring nor Winter?
Nobody knows,
Not even myself
As to why they parted
Supposedly on a fine morning
With throats choked and eyes moist.
Some say, they parted silently
Others say, they did mutter some words
Of the nature of suppressed whispers
When she turned her face
And he looked downward.
Everybody looked askance
But no one asked.
posted by Princess Joya | 11:20 pm
15 Comments:
No its not, I swear!!! Comment na! I suck at them
You sure Arkaydass Chaudhary is not your pen name (quite an innovative pen name, must say) ;)
Who is Arkaydass Chaudhary?
Apparently, Nobody knows.
Yeh, kya hai.
i dont trust my opinion, it's bigtime unstable like me. so i reserve comment on everything and i reserve the right to not reserve comment also which just goes to show how impetuous i am which reinforces my earlier decision to reserve comment on everything which however does not detract from my right to not reserve comment which again shows how unstable i am and therefore to comment would be futile and therefore it is better to reserve it but at the same time holding on to the right... you get my point, na.
But let me add that for some strange reason this poem reminds me of a song 'Chingari jo bhadke' from a Rajesh Khanna heyday film called Amar Prem.
Kush,
He is a poet baba. No, he is not me. But even if he were, why would any of you be any less frank about your opinions? Since when has that been the case on my blog?
Madhavan,
If you spent as much time and brain usage on the poem than on your comment, we might actually have a critical comment!!!
hehheh hohhoh hehehe you have a point
and since i dont wish to disappoint
allow me to make my case
and madhavankutty pillai says:
this is my pain ...and daily refrain
i was born with only half a half a brain
'critical comments' need more than one-half
only a full brain separates wheat from chaff
so, is it not plain
I, who sees a bus and says train
and sighting a crow says crane
how can i critique
deaf men are after all blind to music
and dumb men will only in silence shriek
*Sigh* *suppressing smile* Emotional comment then?
yoicks, but dont you ever give up
emotions require a racing heart
and mine doesnt even kickstart
to sum up its story (which is all sorry):
when you say poetry, my heart hears pottery
Liar!
You have survived in stillness the ravages of the monsters of your mind.
Your heart beats on a different plane.
I shall give up in despair.
But the invitation is still open!
Aranyi,
I am thinking: Either Arkaydass Chaudhary is the desi Bob Dylan or he is just an angst ridden kid who needs to loosen up and have some fun.
I still need to see more of his poems. He sure sounds someone who would go to Vassar.
Interpretation of 'Nobody Knows': The binding thread that weaves itself through the five stanzas is a seeming 'sense of ignorance' but in actuality it is quite different; I have tried to explain it below. The poet provides his reasoning, an alternate reasoning, and a possibility.
The first thought that comes to me is why would a lush green leaf fall off (apart is incorrect usage) and the thought is aptly addressed in the ensuing lines. Excuse my scientific temperament, but a green leaf cannot possibly fall off a tender trunk.
Leavin aside the scientific aspects of the poem, I tried my best to see a common thread other than the one aforementioned to link the stanzas together, but couldn't fathom the poet's thoughts/ideas.
The 'green' leaf would probably depict an inexperienced person, breaking away from reality to weather the unseen. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, before taking the step, he doesn't realize that 'his happiness' lies in growin old/dry on the tree and then falling off to join the rest of the dry leaves. The dry leaves have played their part in the cycle, and are now back in the mud, where they shall be bio-degraded, and go back into the tree as manure. A complete cycle of birth, death and re-birth.
The poet's vision gets blurred, and the reader's subconscious poses 'why'. The poet has cleverly answered the question in the last line of the stanza. Although lines like 'favorite starlet' and 'evil-spirit' are not very impressive, but the same cycle that connects the source and destination stands out remarkably.
In the third stanza, the poet has smartly got the poet who was writing the epic absorbed into the epic itself, which is why he couldn't finish the epic. The fountain-pen being broken was a filler, and was probably not required. The heart being broken is a dicey idea. I choose to believe that the poet became a part of the epic itself, and hence couldn't finish the epic. It could have been a happy or a sad ending, either way, he was a part of it.
The fourth stanza is a disappointment, as it breaks away from the main idea of the poem that was being built up. The only impressive line was the last one, where the poet exhorts the reader to think about how a particular result occured inspite of there being no particular/specific reasons associated with the result. I didn't think, this stanza was worth including in the poem.
The concluding stanza which should have been the most powerful one, unfortunately is not quite so. The cliched sad love story removes whatever little charm the poem had until then. Either I didn't catch the implied in that stanza, or mebbe there was none, other than what is in plain view; that the girl and the guy parted. It is unclear whether the girl turned her face toward the boy, or away from him. Either way, the boy looks downward, indicating guilt, and not sorrow. Other than this little obvious nitty gritty, I couldn't decipher any other meaning, or relation to the idea of a cycle that was forming in my head. The stanza truly goes hand in glove about being ignorant though! Unless, the unfinished epic was about the girl and the guy in the fifth stanza, and the guy being the poet who was writing the epic earlier! Just a conspiracy theory, but poetic interpretation is always that...Isn't it !
The poem doesn't have any striking figures of speech, other than the metaphors that I have mentioned above. The syllabic meters are best not paid any attention to, coz' there are none, though I wonder how the poet would recite this poem at a recital. Rhyming is probably not very important to the poet, but that would have been nice.
This guy who wrote the poem has certainly stolen certain phrases from Keats - like "full-throated" from Ode to a Nightingale. He is writing more out of a compulsion to write something rather than coming totally from within. In other words, its borrowed inspiration, and also uses borrowed words. The composition is quite good, though.
If I may object to the objectivist, all writing is borrowed. As TS Eliot, an expert in this, said, "mediocre writers borrow; great writers steal."
May I also point out, if, as is charged, Arkaydass Chaudhary is writing out of compulsion, then isnt that the same as "coming totally from within". Surely, your compulsions are not "from without". And I dont see anyone writing anything in English without borrowing words already used by others for if he/she were to do so then it would not be English. Now we come to borrowed inspiration. May I point out here that Hamlet, Shakespeare's most lauded play, had at least two or three versions by contemporary and previous writers before Shakespeare borrowed the inspiration and made his sketch. Borrowed is not such a bad word.
@Madhavan: I think, what Com.Obj wanted to express was- The words did not come to the poet, the poet thought about writing a poem, and hence wrote it; he didn't feel like writing one.
Brad- you hit the nail on the head. You summarized my thoughts quite accurately. Thanks!
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