Friday 23 October 2009

kingfisher

the kingfisher
stalls'n rolls
into a blue bolt,
shoots into the pond'n
shoots
up into the sunlight, fleeing
a sprinkle of words
on water, holding
in its beak, flapping,
me!

***

9 comments:

Arun Meethale Chirakkal said...

This has changed since morning, you modified it, I guess. I can see the layers, but even on the surface, it leaves a series of clear pictures. And the concluding lines; “…in its beak, flapping, a fish-- you!” I can’t help thinking of these lines: “We are to God what flies are to wanton boys; they kill us for their sport.”

P. Venugopal said...

I keep changing the pieces I write till I am satisfied, because it is very difficult for me to get the effect I seek. And this pond too is recurring in my pieces, I notice. There is one big pond behind my house in the city suburb with trees and an open ground and plenty of birds around.-:)

Kalpana Bindu said...

Even I have noticed that the pieces keep changing.

A sprinkle of words ..but then why me in the end. May be I need to reread it.

Prabhakar said...

I wondered why you didn't identify with the hunter. that's because as a poet you identify with the victim. such beauty and cruelty in nature.!good pen picture.

P. Venugopal said...

"What do you see, Arjuna," someone asked.
As he put the arrow on the string of the bow and took aim, Arjuna replied: "An eye, just an eye."
Then he shot the arrow to hit the middle of the eye.
You might have heard this story from Mahabharatha about Draupati Swayamvara.
For Arjuna, everything else vanishes except the target. A Chinense Master used to put a bow and quiver of arrows in the hands of anyone who sought to become his disciple and ask him to go on practising hitting the target. When he does hit the bulls' eye after months of hard practise, the Master will ask: "Do you know why you hit the target?"
Only if he says he knows--he knows the full process of it from beginning to end--is he accepted as a disciple.
No one can beat the kingfisher in this business. He virtually turns himself into the arrow. If you watch him the way he should be watched, you will be stunned.

(This is the idea I wanted to communicate. You will now understand why I keep on revising my pieces. How can I bring into it the whole effect of the kingfisher fishing? I am trying to communicate an experience of going into the kingfisher and also the fish.)

Arun Meethale Chirakkal said...

Again it changed. Yesterday I did it. I replaced ‘you’ with ‘me’ and even ‘we’ while reading Kingfisher. I tried to decipher what might’ve prompted you to use ‘you’ rather than ‘me’. And ‘beads’ seem to have paved way for ‘words’.

P. Venugopal said...

Arun, we stagger along trying to find a way to express. 'You' and 'I' are the same. There is even the hint of death and deliverence in the kingfisher's picking. When I realised it I changed it to 'I'. I noticed that after the bird emerges from water and flies away, there is the sound of droplets from its flapping wings falling on water, like when you sprinkle a handful of gravel into the pond. This sound comes after the bird had already fled; the flight is from the limited framework of that which can be captured by the word to some limitless region beyond. I write this to tell you the way the craft of writing works for me, for what it is worth. Ideas abound when one writes. It is in the expressing of it that I fail.-:)

Prabhakar said...

It doesn't matter if the reader interprets it differently. a religious person who believes in rebirths could read this poem differently. the experience will vary with the experiencer

Sumi Mathai said...

flapping,me!
striking.