Famous poems of Nissim Ezekiel (An Indian Poet)
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Nissim Ezekiel
Nissim Ezekiel was an Indian Jewish poet, actor, playwright, editor. Ezekiel was born in 1924 in Bombay (Maharashtra) to a Jewish family. He received a B.a in literature from Wilson College, Bombay University in 1947 and studied philosophy at Birkbeck College, London. He was honoured with the Padmashri award by the president of india in 1988 and the Sahitya Akademi culture awards in 1983. Nissim Ezekiel tide in Mumbai on 9th January 2004 (aged 79)
Philosophy by Nissim Ezekiel
There is a place to which I often go,
Not by planning to, but by a flow
Away from all existence, to a cold
Lucidity, whose will uncontrolled.
Here the mills of God are never slow.
The landscape in its geological prime
Dissolves to show its quintessential smile
A million stars are blotted out. I think
Of each historic passion as a blink
That happened to the sad I of Time.
But residues of meaning still remain,
As darkest myths meander though the pain
Towards a final formula of light.
I, too, reject this clarity of sight.
What cannot be explained, do not explain.
The mundane language of the senses signs
its own interpretations. Common things
Become, by virtue of their commonness,
An argument against their nakedness
That dies of cold to find the truth it brings.
Enterprise by Nissim Ezekiel poem lines
It started as a pilgrimage
Exalting minds and making all
The burdens light, The second stage
Explored but did not test the call.
The sun beat down to match our rage.
We stood it very well, I thought,
Observed and put down copious notes
On things the peasants sold and bought
The way of serpents and of gods.
Three cities were a sage head taught.
But when differences arose
On how to cross a desert patch,
We lost of friend whose stylish prose
Was quite the best of all over batch.
A shadow falls on us and grows.
Another face was reached when we
Were twice attacked, and lost our way.
A section claimed its liberty
To leave the group. I tried to prey.
Our leader said he smelt the sea
We noticed nothing as we went,
A struggling crowd of little hope,
lgnoring what the thunder ment,
Depried of common needs like soap.
Some work broken, some merely bent.
When, finally, we reached the place,
We hardly know why we were there.
The trip had darkened every face,
Our deeds were neither great nor rare.
Home is where we have to gether grace.
What was the Nissim Ezekiel first collection of poem
A Time to Change
We who leave the house in April, Lord
How shall we return?
Debtors to the whore of Love,
Corrupted by the things imagined
Through the winter nights, alone,
The flesh defiled by dreams of flesh,
Rehearsed desire dead in spring.
How shall we return?
The juice of life is in us still
But when the mind determines everything
The leap is never made, the music
Never quite completed, redemption
Never fully won
From what has been, but always
And anywhere, in London or in Rome,
The amputated gestures, eyes turned away,
Incomplete absorpation in the common sense,
Cramped, sedentary, in silent rooms,
Marking time on unknown ground
With faults concealed.
Witness to the small rain and sundry mists,
Half-hearted birds, uncertain dawns,
Here in April we are waiting
For passages of pure creation or simply
Girls, lightly dressed and light of heart,
that the door be never shut.
In India poem by Nissim Ezekiel
Always in the sun's eye,
Here among the beggars,
Hawkers, pavement sleepers,
Hutment dwellers, slums,
Dead souls of the man and gods.
Burnt-out mothers, wasted child
And torured animal,
All in noisy silence
Suffering the place and time,
I ride my elephant of thought,
A Cezanne slung around my neck.
The Roman Catholics Goan boys
The whitewashed Anglo-Indian boys
The muscal-bound Islamic boys
Wear earnest in their prayers.
They copied, bullied, stole in pairs
The bragged about their love affairs
They craved the table broke the chairs
But never missed their prayers.
The Roman Catholics Goan boys
Confessed their solitary Joys
Confessed their game with high-heeled toys
And hastened to the prayers.
The Anglo-Indian gentleman
Dark whisky in some Jewish den.
With Muslims slowly creeping in
Before or after prayers.
To celebrate the year's end:
men in grey or black,
women, bosom semi-bare,
Twenty-three of us in all
six Nations represented.
Or
Then someone says: we can 'I
enjoy it, somehow, don't you think?
The atmosphere corrupt,
and look at our wooden wives.
take him out to get some air.
Marriage by Nissim Ezekiel
Lovers, when they mary, face
Eternity with touching grace.
Complacent at being fated
Never to be sparated.
Bride is always pretty,
The groom a lucky man. The darkened room
Roar out the joy of flash and blood.
The use of nakedness is good.
I went through this, believing all.
Our love denied the primal Fall
Wordless, we walked among the trees.
And felt immortal as the breeze.
However many times we came
Apart, we came together. The same
Thing over the over again.
Then suddenly the mark of Cain
Began to show on her and me.
Why should I rain the mystery
By harping on the suffering rest,
Myself a frequent wedding guest?
Night of Scorpion famous poem written by Nissim Ezekiel
I remember the night my mother
was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours
of steady rain had driven him
to crawl beneath a sack of rice.
Parting with his poison- flash
of diabolic tail in the dark room
he risked the rain again.
The peasants come like swarms of files
the buzzed the name of God a hundred times
to paralyse The evil one.
With candles and with lanters
throwing giant scorpion shadows
on the mud-blacked walls
they searched for him: he was not found.
They clicked there tongues.
With every moment that the scorpion made
his poison moved in mother's blood, they said.
May he sit still, they said
May the sins of your previous birth
be burned away tonight, they said.
May your suffering decrease
the misfortunate of your next birth, they said.
May the sum of all evil
balanced in this unreal world
Against the sum of good
become diminished by your pain. They said
May the poison purify your flesh
of desire, and your spirit of ambition,
they said, and this sat around
on the floor with my mother in the centre,
the peace of understanding on each face.
More candles, more lanters, more neighbours,
more insects and endless rain.
My mother twisted through and through groaning on a mat.
My father, sceptic, relationist
trying every curse and blessing
powder mixture, herb by hybrid.
He even proud a little paraffin
upon the bitten toe and put a match to it.
I watched the flame feeding on my mother.
I watched the holy man his rites
to tame the poison with an incentation.
After twenty hour it lost its sting.
My mother only said.
Thank you thank God The scorpion picked on me and spared my children.
A poem of dedication written by Nissim Ezekiel
Island poem by Nissim Ezekiel
Unsuitable for song as well as sense
the Island flower into slums
And skyscrapers, reflecting
Precisely the growth of the mind .
I am here to find my way in it.
Sometimes I cry for help
But mostly keep my own counsel.
I hear distorted echoes
Of my own ambiguous vioce
And of dragons climbing to be human.
Bright and tempting breeze
Flow across the island,
Separating past from the future;
Then the air is still again
As I sleep the fragrance of ignorance.
How delight the soul with absolute
sense of salvation, how
hold to a single willed direction?
I cannot leave the island,
I was born here and belong.
Even now a host of miracles
hurries me a daily business,
minding the ways of the island
as a good native should,
taking clam and clamour in my stride.
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