evolution

To the Foot From its Child – Pablo Neruda

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To the Foot From Its Child

A child's foot doesn't know it's a foot yet
And it wants to be a butterfly or an apple
But then the rocks and pieces of glass,
the streets, the stairways
and the roads of hard earth
keep teaching the foot that it can't fly,
that it can't be a round fruit on a branch.
Then the child's foot
was defeated, it fell
in battle,
it was a prisoner,
condemned to life in a shoe.

Little by little without light
it got acquainted with the world in its own way
without knowing the other imprisoned foot
exploring life like a blind man.

Those smooth toenails
of quartz in a bunch,
got harder, they changed into
an opaque substance, into hard horn
and the child's little petals
were crushed, lost their balance,
took the form of a reptile without eyes,
with triangular heads like a worm's.
And they had callused over,
they were covered
with tiny lava fields of death,
a hardening unasked for.
But this blind thing kept going
without surrender, without stopping
hour after hour.
One foot after another,
now as a man,
or a woman,
above,
below,
through the fields, the mines,
the stores, the government bureaus,
backward,
outside, inside,
forward,
this foot worked with its shoes,
it hardly had time
to be naked in love or in sleep
one foot walked, both feet walked
until the whole man stopped.

And then it went down
into the earth and didn't know anything
because there everything was dark,
it didn't know it was no longer a foot
or if they buried it so it could fly
or so it could
be an apple.

Pablo Neruda, translated by Jodey Bateman





Looking at the first stanza … this is all about growing up … accepting who we are and not what we would like to be … in life perhaps … and with time we become molded by the constraints of who we are … eventually fitting into life after the repeated exercise of experience … but do we become defeated when we can’t be something different …

Then the sorry tell of a forced existence … a forced way of life being led this way and that way … over the rough ground … and hopefully some smooth ground too … it became hardened nailed to life – if you excuse the pun … it became toughened to life … perhaps that is what happens all the time with the body that suffers the consequences of living … I won’t mention the state of my left knee which is yelling at me at the moment to be something different





In the second stanza there is another side to the situation … a brother if you like who has been through the same restrictive experiential existence … and has had to adapt too … was this brother more accepting … who knows? … but it is always nice having someone close by all the time to keep you in balance … and there is reciprocate behavior …so that in unison ground is covered so to speak …  but perhaps the brother foot led the way and forced the child foot into following … partnership can be one sided … 

In the end the foot had to come to rest … what was it like at the end of the journey … and what was the end … it was returned to what it might become … a touch of reincarnation … or perhaps an unknown spiritual afterlife … so many people die wishing to be blessed with something better … sadly, in the past Church congregations paid money with that thought in mind … not too mention terrorists who hoped to be rewarded after performing ugly violent acts.

Looking at the structure. This poem is an example of an unusual extended personal personification of how part of a body evolves in a life-time … it is up to the reader to extend the thought into how we adapt to experience and how we try to cope if we cannot be what we want to be … how we accept who we are under the circumstances of our existence … and how we work together in unison with the body of life … and whether we are connected to a soul-mate to lead us






Here is another poem that follows on from the last stanza. Albeit a gentle welcoming ending to life. A classic example of extended personification – Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death — He kindly stopped for me —”

In this poem, Death is personified as a polite, gentle gentleman who arrives in a carriage and takes the speaker on a journey. Instead of being something frightening or abstract, Death behaves like a courteous companion. Death “kindly” stops and drives a carriage. It transforms fear of death into something calm and reflective. The entire poem continues this personification metaphor, making it richer and more meaningful.
















					

		
		

					

	




			
				


	

		

							
In Jerusalem – Mahmoud Darwish – Analysis
									

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In Jerusalem





In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy ... ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy,
because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.
I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself:
How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a
stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly
then I become another. Transfigured. Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger
mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t be safe.”
I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white
biblical rose. And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.
I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?
I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Muhammad
spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”
Then what? A woman soldier shouted: Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?
I said: You killed me ... and I forgot, like you, to die





Mahmoud Darwish
translated by Fady Joudah





Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet and author who was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. He won numerous awards for his works. Darwish used Palestine as a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile. According to the Internet he has been described as incarnating and reflecting ‘the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry’.

Born in a village near Galilee, Darwish spent time as an exile throughout the Middle East and Europe for much of his life. He was imprisoned in the 1960s for reading his poetry aloud while travelling from village to village without a permit. Under the influence of both Arabic and Hebrew literature, Darwish was exposed to the work of Federico García Lorca and Pablo Neruda through Hebrew translations.





‘In Jerusalem’ is considered one of his most important poems. Jerusalem is the centre city of the three religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And remains the centre of conflict on legitimacy over it. This poem was a popular response after Donald Trump supported Israel in making it capital.





Jerusalem is first depicted as the personification of love and peace (lines 1 -7). And then the rising-up from the ashes. A personal rising as well as the rising of Palestine. A forgetting of any past religious association – I walk from one epoch to another without a memory. A bathing in the pure light of the holy – all this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. The stone could refer to the Foundation Stone behind the ‘Wailing Wall’ which could be regarded as the fountain of all true light from God.





Then the transformation and transfiguration to a true state outside both time and place. The message from Isaiah that redemption is possible on belief. The white biblical rose has a flavour of Christianity and purity but there is no ascension and the reference is to the prophet Muhammad.





The poem ends with a return to Earth and the dramatic ending by a woman solider shouting: It’s you again? Didn’t I kill you? This is followed by that wonderful response – I said: You killed me … and I, forgot, like you, to die.





Death cannot destroy; and the survival of Palestine is inferred – or in fact life in general, whether Jew or Arab. A poem that transcends all the waring religious factions. Perhaps, in due time, Jerusalem will revert to the love and peace denoted in the opening lines.





Muhammad Darwish on Wikipedia

					

		
		

					

	




			
				


	

		

							
Being Optimistic – Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
									

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From Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: IV, cxxix


Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven,

Floats o’er this vast and wondrous monument,

And shadows forth its glory. There is given

Unto the things of earth, which Time hath bent,

A spirit’s feeling, and where he hath leant

His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power

And magic in the ruin’d battlement,

For which the palace of the present hour

Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower.


A broken scythe – an implement with a long handle and a long curved single-edged blade, used to cut grass – well time has bent – due to the work at hand broken, with broken tools (broken by humanity)


But, but, but – there is power and magic in the ruin’d battlement … well thank goodness for that – we must have faith


The palace of the present hour … the present hour is a palace despite being a ruin’d battlement


Ages as a dower – a gift that will be given by time – perhaps an evolving gift, from one who is an optimist … perhaps inherent in the creation of time is an inevitability of positive evolution


So have faith and time will be the saviour … and enjoy the palace of the present hour!


From Wikipedia …


Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to “Ianthe”. The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholyand disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood.