Poet, Lover and Birdwatcher by Nissim Ezekiel

Nissim Ezekiel Introduction

Nissim Ezekiel (16 December 1924 – 9 January 2004)  was an Indian Jewish poet, actor, playwright, editor and art critic. He was a foundational figure in postcolonial India's literary history, specifically for Indian Poetry in English.

 He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 for his collection, "Latter-Day Psalms", by the Sahitya Academy, India's National Academy of Letters. Ezekiel has been applauded for his subtle, restrained and well crafted diction, dealing with common and mundane (simple) themes in a manner that manifests both cognitive profundity, as well as an unsentimental, realistic sensibility, that has been influential on the course of succeeding Indian English poetry.

 Theme

The poem is about patience which according to the poet is the only way for the Poet, the Lover, and the Birdwatcher to succeed. In the poem, he describes that patience is the best action to achieve the goal.

 Poet, lover, Birdwatcher (included in the volume The Exact Name) is such a poem where beauty and bareness of statement go together where it weaves the themes of birdwatching, wooing (support) and writing poetry together, and shows their resemblance: the need for patient, quiet waiting until the rare bird is revealed, the woman .

 

Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher Poem

Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher

To force the pace and never to be still
Is not the way of those who study birds
Or women. The best poets wait for words.
The hunt is not an exercise of will
But patient love relaxing on a hill
To note the movement of a timid wing;
Until the one who knows that she is loved
No longer waits but risks surrendering -
In this the poet finds his moral proved
Who never spoke before his spirit moved.

 

The slow movement seems, somehow, to say much more.
To watch the rarer birds, you have to go
Along deserted lanes and where the rivers flow
In silence near the source, or by a shore
Remote and thorny like the heart's dark floor.
And there the women slowly turn around,
Not only flesh and bone but myths of light
With darkness at the core, and sense is found
But poets lost in crooked, restless flight,
The deaf can hear, the blind recover sight.

 

 Summary

Here Ezekiel expresses his view about the method which a poet should adopt to achieve success in the writing of poetry. He illustrates his view by comparing a poet to a lover and a birdwatcher. In each case, he says, illumination and fulfillment come through a patient wait and through silent perseverance.

Like “The Lunatic, The Lover, and The Poet“, the poet draws similarities between the poet, the lover and the birdwatcher. The poem has been divided into two stanzas having 10 lines each.

 

Stanza 1

The poem with simple words that to force the pace and never to be still is not the way of those who study birds or women i.e. those who hurry and are impatient cannot watch birds or please a woman or compose a poem.

The best poets wait for words. According to the poet, the hunt or struggle to watch a rare bird or please a woman or compose a poem does not require an exercise of will i.e. hard work but patience and love to watch slowly the movement of a timid wing of the rare bird on a hill.

Patience ultimately pays. The one who waits patiently for the woman to love him back ultimately wins her as she cannot resist surrendering herself to him when she knows that he truly loves her. Love is nothing without patience.

Similarly, the poet also needs to wait for the words that may come to him spontaneously. Those who wait patiently get the best words for their verses because they did not rush for the words.

 

Stanza 2

In stanza 2, the poet says that the slow movement seems, somehow, to say much more i.e. patience is more powerful than it seems to be.

 To watch the rarer birds one has to go along deserted lanes and where the rivers flow in silence near the source or near a shore which is far away and thorny i.e. full of difficulties like the heart’s dark floor i.e. as deep in the forest as the core of heart which is also deep and dark. This is how a birdwatcher succeeds.

 Next, he talks about the love of the woman. According to him, to find true love, a lover has to go deep into the darkness of heart and there the woman is not only flesh and bone but myths of light i.e. mysteries that remain in the center of heart’s darkness.

 

The line means that the lover of a woman if remains patient, will be able to explore not only the physical body and its pleasure but the mysteries of a woman’s soul which are more pleasurable.

Similarly, when the poet also remains patient to wait for the words, his poem’s sense is found i.e. he succeeds in composing a piece of art that the deaf can hear, and makes the blind recover his sight.