Ballad-y : Bloody but unBowed

is for Ballad

In simplest terms a ballad is a narrative poem with a straightforward rhyme scheme (four line stanzas with xaxa and abab are common) and often, a refrain.  The word ballad has evolved from the Latin ballare which means to dance, so a ballad was originally a form intended for dancing to (the word ball as in ball dancing comes from there too).   A ballad is therefore a song that tells a story but has been stripped of its tune. 

The ballad I am posting for my A-Z entry is based on Karna (also known as Radheya after his foster mother, read more here).  He is the most fascinating tragic character ever from the ancient Indian epic, Mahabharata. He fought on the losing side in a great war, and the battle between him and his half-brother Arjun is the climax of the story.   

First among unequals

Of all the sons that Kunti bore

the first was by far the best;
a staunch friend in peace and in war,

stood steadfast through every test

and knew what he was standing for,

didn’t deviate the slightest.

Of all the sons that Kunti bore

her first was by far the best.

It took no courage to champion

the winning cause and side;

when justice was clearly being done

what was there to decide?

But when lines got blurred and uncertain,

easy rules no more applied,

he stood firm by his friend then,

tragic prince and dignified.

Of all the sons that Kunti bore

his fate was the cruellest;

cast off at birth, he floated ashore

to a foster mother’s breast

loved as her own, though low-born, poor

her circumstances distressed.

Of all the sons that Kunti bore

the first grew to be the best.

He was a son of the Great Sun

and a virgin’s thoughtless whim,

armoured with the Sun’s protection;

yet his trials many and grim.

And when his life was finished and done

he’d triumphed over all of them,

his word and spirit never broken,

no-one more kingly than him.

Of all the sons that Kunti bore

Radheya was the eldest.

His birth mother came to his door,

threw a lure in with a request

“Spare my sons, their blood is yours;

they’ll crown you king at my behest.”

Of all the sons that Kunti bore

the first born was the finest.

He paid homage where it was due,

and then he gave her his word,

“I’ll spare the sons of king Pandu,

except the middle-born third;

no battle field can contain us two,

either Arjun or I will be conquered.

Five sons you have, I promise you

that number will not be altered.”

Of all the sons that Kunti bore

the least loved turned out the best -

stood by his friend in a misjudged war;

cursed from birth, and dispossessed

yet he fought well, loyal to his core,

and went to a martyr’s rest.

Of all the sons that Kunti bore

the first born was the finest.

There it is, a narrative, a simple rhyme scheme, uncomplicated stanzas, and a sort of refrain.  Ballad.  

And completely off topic, the word balady can mean native, traditional, rustic, folk and/or local in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, which for some unfathomable reason, makes me feel absurdly pleased.












Posted for the A-Z Challenge.

April is for A-z... And poetry...

is for Awdl 

The good thing about Welsh poetry forms is that they are a whole bunch easier to actually write than to pronounce. 

An Awdl is a Welsh ode with a complicated rhyme scheme of internal rhymes and alliteration called cynghanedd (I am not even attempting a whisper!)  There are some 24 variations, and I am trying one called Hir a Thoddaid. 

I have finally found one example of a rule that is easier done than said!  That’s a huge education in itself.

The rules are

·        10 syllable lines, can be any metre

·        6 line stanzas, any number, usually an ode is a long poem

·      All six lines must rhyme, lines 1-4 use end rhymes, line 5 uses the rhyme internally on the 7^th, 8^th or 9^th syllable, and introduces a new end word which then must rhyme internally with the last line.

Sounds insanely complex, but it’s easier to just jump in and try.  Here’s the one I wrote, with the end rhymes and internal rhymes in a different colours:

Awdl for you!

Butterflies and buds, bees and nightingales

winds of change, or from the West, even Wales

glorified body parts of slim females

some cute aspect of nature never fails

Me writing an awdl? My heart quails in fear

the rules are key, subjects just mere details.

What topic should I address in an ode?

Forget the whales, the seahorse and the toad

pots and urns have been done quite a la mode

there’s no point going down that well-trodden road.

Great words do not with time erode, and so

there’s no option but to go beyond Spode.

The thinking’s done, now this is what I state

my ode to ode itself I dedicate

I waited years, the Awdl is worth the wait

the sole scheme harder to articulate

than to act upon and illustrate the rhyme;

this likely my one and only time till date.

Awdls are easier to write than to explain

that one fact is a splendiferous gain

from childhood it’s been dinned into my brain -

that talk is cheap, action the tough terrain

rough diamond in the seam of plain black coal;

this reboots and corrects the whole again.

Awdl, I am totally in awe of you

though I can’t pronounce your name, not a clue

but we’ve come this far, we’re almost through (phew!)

You know what? you could safely say that too

of my name and it would be true no doubt.

But we’re much more than names we shout or spew.

Done.  Awdl for you.  Do you have any Welsh? if so, please tell me the pronunciation of cynghanedd, and for that matter awdl too.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge.

Smoke shadow

There’s no movement, except a thread

of smoke throws a feathered shadow

on the far wall, electric’s gone dead,

the candle stands stock still, only its burning head

trembles a little within its diffuse halo.

The props for small talk, tables, chairs, party hats;

elbows off please, smiles on, preoccupied -

even smoke has shadows! how to trump that?

entire months fallen domino-flat

as the years windmill from side to side.

Diving into the A-Z

This year I have finally screwed up enough courage for the A-Z, and managed to find the sticking place, too. But I haven’t got it all down; it's unscheduled and mostly imperfect still, my p’s and q’s are not sorted, never mind the x’s and z’s.   


But I’ll cross those bridges when I come to them and chance a theme. And my theme is fixed verse forms. Totally predictable,  I know. I don't believe in nasty surprises. I have some favourite forms that I write to often, and there are others that I don’t really know anything about. Well, it's time to find out! 26 letters, 26 forms, 26 poems.  


No guarantees on rules and metres and feet remaining unbroken, of course. That iambic pentathingy particularly gives me butterflies in the tummy, except mine are never butterflies but more like caterpillars with that slithery-shuddery mode of locomotion. All I'll say about rules is  - will observe as far as able.

The time has come - the Walrus said -

to sniff out many things

offshoots - and tips – clogged fountainheads

and why the bulbul sings

if one can fly from A-Z

blind, and with batwings.

My sources are many and multifarious; the most important online ones are here and here. And last but not the least, dVerse where I have learnt and continue to learn many things about form.

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2014, originally started by Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out.

Write....Edit...Publish...March 2014 : Through the Eyes of a Child

Hello everyone,

  

Time to head back to Write...Edit...Publish... the monthly bloghop hosted by Denise Covey, where the prompt this month is "Through the eyes of a child". Another prompt with myriad possibilities.  

Here is my entry, more a reaction to the words than the image; and in a vague, roundabout way a tribute to my first language teacher, and to Denise and the teaching profession generally.  

Girl interrupted at her blog

March 1^st

Something is going on between Mama and Steppes, and I can bet that it is nothing good.  Just because I am young doesn’t mean I have no sense.  I can figure things out for myself.

I wish my father was here.  He would know exactly what I should do.  That is an insane thing to write of course.  If Papa were really here, Steppes would not have been part of all this.  I don’t remember Papa very well.  Sometimes I wish I had been younger when he died, so that I would have no memories at all.    Or older, so I’d have more complete ones.  Just not the age I was and stuck with half-memories.

 

Steppes does not like me, but he has recently come up with the notion of adopting me.  Weird or what?  I am not supposed to know that, but I overheard.  There was the mother of all rows.  Steppes goes ballistic over the strangest of things.  Both of them were extra polite to each other at the dinner table tonight.  Anybody would know that something was up, even if they hadn’t heard them quarrelling.  I mean, the way they talked the food practically froze on the plates. 

March 3^rd

Mrs Osmond says I must write a journal, but nothing ever happens to write about.   The idea of pen and paper diaries is ridiculous, who writes those nowadays?  Just suppose some moron came snooping and found it?  A blog is so much more interesting.  And safer.

Mama is strict, she doesn’t let me join the usual rounds of parties and picnics with the school crowd.  Not that I particularly want to.  But even if I did, she wouldn’t allow me. 

There’s just a high wall at the end of the garden to look out onto.  I can hear the cars on the road, but none of them stop at our gate.  I go to school and come back. Spend the afternoon on the little balcony off my room. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I sit there at night too.  Take my laptop there, it’s pleasanter than indoors.

 

No-one can see me there if I sit down; the railing is a a thin slab with little star-shaped holes in it.  Like fancy peepholes.  Mama is rather keen on privacy.  Can’t imagine why.  Not as if there is anyone looking.  The nearest neighbours are half a mile away.  Like I said, nothing ever happens.  It’s really hard doing up posts with the shitty life I lead.  

I don’t expect Mrs Osmond will understand though.  Adults are so over-the-top demanding.  She will go ballistic at how often I don’t write.

 

March 7^th

Maybe I am from a noble family?!  Today Mama quite casually mentioned that I have money coming to me when I grow up. I asked her if I was an heiress and she laughed and said not quite that rich, and not to get strange ideas into my head.  I asked why we lived in this old rundown house miles away from anywhere, and she said because the money was tied up and we don’t really have much cash. Yeah, right. 

She rambled on about trusts and banks and all that, half of which I couldn’t be bothered to follow.  Actually, I just switch off when she speaks like that.

But she is quite different when Steppes is away, she laughs more, and she sits with me on my balcony.  She said something about being careful with money and responsibility and not trust everybody which made my antenna go ting and I did understand.  But I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t heard them quarrel.

March 15^th

Steppes is back.  And Mama’s back to her non-smiley self.  I heard them from the balcony.  Squabbling again in the kitchen.  The kitchen door’s right beneath and it was wide open.

March 25^th

Mama’s dead.  I can’t believe I just wrote that.  I am not sure what’s going to happen to me.  I am really scared. The place is crawling with policemen.  I have to be careful.  I don’t really know if I have been legally adopted or not.  I don’t know if that can happen without my agreeing to it, I mean I wasn’t even asked?  How crazy is that?  So is my stepfather my legal guardian now?  Will anyone believe someone who is not legally of age?  Are under-age people allowed to testify?  Where do I go?  I have to be careful. 

March 26^th

I couldn’t figure out a way to tell them without everyone getting to know.  But I will.  It was a full-moon night on the 20^th. I was on the balcony.  I saw her die.  Through the star-shaped peepholes.

26^th April

To

The Asst Commissioner of Police

Crime Branch/Homicide

Uttarakhand Police

Dehradun

Dear Sir/Madam,

Sub: The Monica Salve/Natalie Pereira Case

I am a teacher of English at the Pinegrove School, and taught Natalie Pereira.  Natalie was away for several days after her mother was murdered, and returned to school on 31^st March.  I had asked her class to keep a journal earlier in the term, and she had started blogging in compliance.  She passed on the link in one of her workbooks without my alluding to the journalling assignment, on 1^st April just before she went missing.

Unfortunately, I was involved in a serious car accident on that afternoon, and therefore did not go through her workbook immediately after.  The news of Natalie’s terrible death did not reach me in hospital, not till the police arrived for my statement.  At that time, I was still unaware of her blog, the information therein and its implications.  I saw her link and checked it only on my return.  

I cannot but feel deeply saddened at the time lost, though inadvertently.  I attach prints of her entries through March, with the hope that they will help bring clarity and justice.

Sincerely,

Mrs M Osmond.

WC - 991
All feedback welcome



Read the other entries here and/or join in with your own.    


                          

One true thing about islands

Can’t escape the ocean on an island

its daylong skyblue lovesong; serenades

trailed all night over the tired beachfront;

the nagging tales of princes and mermaids

palled now, tattered like fingers of seaweed

washed up dark in lagoons of foreboding,

in rockpools where earth and water meet

under a plastic, pleated dome of batwings.

How many lives lie wrecked on its soft bed

drawn headlong in stunning meteor falls?

beneath its smiley faced top sheets, what debts

are allowed to slowlapse beyond recall?

Can’t escape the oceans, the sounds at hand;

each man crumbles, each man is an island.

I sometimes think of Delhi

You too are not my mother

yet there is on my body

a second navel, a mark,

a closed, healed mouth of a scar

where the pulsing cord was severed

between us finally.

I don’t look at navels often.

I’ve travelled perhaps too far;

sometimes I spot a rampart,

an alien ringed boulevard,

the glint of foreign waters.

And I think of you then.

Of course there is no return;

no-one knows that better than me.

Each spring new flowers, new shoots;

brisk autumns of foreign fruit.

But somewhere a jamun tree

still dances in its crushed-fruit skirt.

Mother's Day is being celebrated here in Egypt today. Yasmin deshe yadachar. I am greatly fortunate in that I have more than one mother. Remembering and honouring all the women who grew me up and the places they grew me up in. Happy Mother's Day!

Ordinary palm-hearts

There is really no need for you to know

my ways of loving; the ways I have loved you

destitute, desperate, hungry, hollow

but incandescent, a candle whose flame glows

inside a wax canopy, delicately see-through.

You can look at the wax, think what you do,

think my ways are ordinary ways

and that ordinary bit would be as true

there’s nothing to misconstrue

about a candle – wax, wick, a flick of flame;

not even original, just the same

old cliché to keep the darkness ablaze.

The wax the colour of toddy palm-hearts and truth

but you may as well stop at the crust of the fruit.

Colours everywhere

The sudden splashes in bowls; and beads strung

in an old shop; bushy headed carrots flung

into a bin, crumpled candy wrappers;

and someone’s rainbow load of laundry hung

out far across the road; small, flapping hands

of winds on the red silk cotton blooms; brands

stacked on store shelves; slippers outside a door.

I’ve travelled far in search of foreign lands.

Happy Holi/spring, whichever you are celebrating today!