Poetic Geniuses - 5

I don't understand much of English poetry - that feeling of adopted language's non-mother tongue alienation is still there. English, for me, is the language of professional expressions or perhaps, the one for communication. But love, dreams, and poetry still happens in Hindi-Urdu only.

And yet, there are few English poets, whom I have followed and admired. One such name is Nossim Ezekiel. Among many gems from Ezekiel, a friend told me about this one a few days back - Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher by Nissim Ezekiel. Tis funny weird amazing interesting that how we find our lives in someone else's words. I don't know how he knew that I was... and I am (!) all three - Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher!!

To force the pace and never to be still

Is not the way of those who study birds

Or women. The best poets wait for words.

The hunt is not an exercise of will

But patient love relaxing on a hill

To note the movement of a timid wing;

Until the one who knows that she is loved

No longer waits but risks surrendering -

In this the poet finds his moral proved

Who never spoke before his spirit moved.

The slow movement seems, somehow, to say much more.

To watch the rarer birds, you have to go

Along deserted lanes and where the rivers flow

In silence near the source, or by a shore

Remote and thorny like the heart's dark floor.

And there the women slowly turn around,

Not only flesh and bone but myths of light

With darkness at the core, and sense is found

But poets lost in crooked, restless flight,

The deaf can hear, the blind recover sight.

- Nissim Ezekiel

Find previous posts on Poetic Geniuses Here.