Saturday 18 April 2015

P is for Passionate...Peerless...and Paz



Paz, Octavio (1914-1988) 

Today I am responding to a poem by Mexican poet Octavio Paz, a Nobel Laureate and a poet-diplomat, like Neruda. Paz was the Mexican ambassador to India during the sixties, and while there, influenced numerous writers/poets/artists of a Bengali cultural/literary movement called the Hungry Generation, the first post-colonial cultural movement in Bengal (which happens to be my home state).   Therefore, my connect with Paz when I first read him was immediate and deep, though I understood the reasons for that much later.  


My prompt for this entry is As One Listens to the Rain



As if it's timeless



Listen to me like deep afternoons when it seems
even doves have dozed off, and tiny petals fall
from the invisible, green flowers of the neem
silent and scentless against the garden wall

and a misguided cricket chirps in its crack
before its appointed time. A wheel barrow -
broken wood and rust - tumbled on its back
zithers like an echo in its shadow.

Your hand as transient as time and peace
trickles down my hair, angled collar bone
between mirage and mist, between breath and crease
of skin, cups a pulse as if it’s your own.

Listen to the pulse, the tempo of those tunes
as if it were timeless like these afternoons.




P is also for Politically correct.  Yesterday I came across a blog post which talked about Enid Blyton's books, how they were no longer acceptable now, that some people find them objectionable and not reflective of our current society and values. I derived enormous enjoyment from those books, and feel there's nothing wrong with current generations reading them, provided we explain the changes that have happened. Should these books with gender and racial stereotypes be read now, or should they be scrapped?











Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2015.




8 comments:

  1. People argue about the racism in Mark Twain's books, but they were a product of the time and a slice of history.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Could not agree more with that! we lose our heritage in this quibbling over pc terms

      Delete
    2. I was thinking something the same, it's written for the time it was in... and that is history.

      Jeremy [Retro]
      AtoZ Challenge Co-Host [2015]

      There's no earthly way of knowing.
      Which direction we are going!

      HOLLYWOOD NUTS!
      Come Visit: You know you want to know if me or Hollywood... is Nuts?

      Delete
  2. life is a mirage and we really donot sometiems know waht we want.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is the weekend before the last full week of A to Z. You’re amazing for staying with us this long. Thanks for your commitment. You’re almost there. This event only happens once a year, so get ready for the home stretch!

    Stephen Tremp
    A to Z Cohost
    P is for Paranormal Vs. Supernatural

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think older books shouldn't be scrapped (unless they are absolutely horrible), but it is up to education and parenting to make people understand that times change, and some literature was written in another time. I think it is important to read those things so we can see how the world changed...

    @TarkabarkaHolgy from
    Multicolored Diary - Epics from A to Z
    MopDog - 26 Ways to Die in Medieval Hungary

    ReplyDelete
  5. Beautiful poem..I love Enid Blyton's books and grew up reading them. I don't think they should be scrapped.

    ReplyDelete