The Hill
This normative hill
like all others
is transparently accessible,
out there
and in the mind,
not to be missed
except in peril of one's life.
Do not muse on it
from a distance:
it's not remote
for the view only,
it's for the sport
of climbing.
What the hill demands
is a man
with forces flowering
as from the crevices
of rocks and rough surfaces
wild flowers
force themselves towards the sun
and burn
for a moment.
How often must I
say to myself
what I say to others:
trust your nerves--
in conversation or in bed
the rhythm comes.
And once you begin
hang on for life.
What is survival?
What is existence?
I am not talking about
poetry. I am
talking about
perishing
outrageously
and calling it
activity.
I say: be done with it.
I say:
you've got to love that hill.
Be wrathful, be impatient
that you are not
on the hill. Do not forgive
yourself or other,
though charity
is all very well.
Do not rest
in irony or acceptance.
Man should not laugh
when he is dying.
In decent death
you flow into another kind of time
which is the hill
you always thought you knew.
Commentary
Thanks to Vinod Krishna who sent me today’s poem, saying “The poet Nissim Ezekiel has just passed away. I thought it would be appropriate to submit a poem by him”.
I hadn’t come across the poem before - my knowledge of Ezekiel was, sadly, confined to two of his almost trademark renditions of Indian English, and the ubiquitous “Night of the Scorpion”, all from that marvellous anthology “Panorama”. Today’s poem is very different in tone - at once exhortatory and philosophical, so that while it is not the stirring call to action that, say, Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” [Poem #38], it is nonetheless a thought-provoking poem.
The temptation is to call the poem unoriginal, because so many of the elements seem familiar from other poems. But the overall poem is far from derivative, with passages like
Do not forgive
yourself or other,
though charity
is all very well.
that shock the reader with a reversal of the popular connotations of words like ‘forgiveness’ and ‘charity’, and
What is existence?
I am not talking about
poetry. I am
talking about
perishing
outrageously
and calling it
activity.
with the ambiguous value judgement of individual fragments belying the purposefulness of the verse.
A fitting epitaph for the man, definitely.
— Martin
Links
An epitaph:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1023721.htm
For a short discussion and bio of his literary life see:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/Literature/literat.html
[The article by a Prof Vinay Lal of UCLA is in pdf format].
A photograph of Nissim Ezekiel is at:
http://www.meadev.nic.in/earthquake/culture/literature/gallery/gal18.htm