DIGITAL LIBRARIES - HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF DIGITAL LIBRARIES

DIGITAL LIBRARIES - HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF DIGITAL LIBRARIES

DIGITAL LIBRARIES - MODULE INTRODUCTION OF DIGITAL LIBRARY

DIGITAL LIBRARIES - MODULE INTRODUCTION OF DIGITAL LIBRARY

THE REBEL BY D. J. ENRIGHT

THE REBEL 
D. J. ENRIGHT

Do you know anyone who always disagrees with you or your friends, or likes to do the opposite of what everyone thinks they should do? Think of a word to describe such a person. Discuss with your partner some of the things such a person generally does. Now read the poem.

When everybody has short hair,

The rebel lets his hair grow long.

When everybody has long hair,

The rebel cuts his hair short.

When everybody talks during the lesson,

The rebel doesn’t say a word.

When nobody talks during the lesson,

The rebel creates a disturbance.

When everybody wears a uniform,

The rebel dresses in fantastic clothes.

When everybody wears fantastic clothes,

The rebel dresses soberly.

In the company of dog lovers,

The rebel expresses a preference for cats.

In the company of cat lovers,

The rebel puts in a good word for dogs.

When everybody is praising the sun,

The rebel remarks on the need for rain.

When everybody is greeting the rain,

The rebel regrets the absence of sun.

When everybody goes to the meeting,

The rebel stays at home and reads a book.

When everybody stays at home and reads a book,

The rebel goes to the meeting.

When everybody says, Yes please,

The rebel says, No thank you.

When everybody says, No thank you,

The rebel says, Yes please.

It is very good that we have rebels.

You may not find it very good to be one.

THE SQUIRREL BY MILDRED BOWERS ARMSTRONG

THE SQUIRREL 
MILDRED BOWERS ARMSTRONG

You may have seen a squirrel sitting on the ground eating a nut. What did it look like? Here is a poet’s description of just such a squirrel.

He wore a question mark for tail,

An overcoat of gray,

He sat up straight to eat a nut.

He liked to tease and play,

And if we ran around his tree,

He went the other way.

AJAMIL AND THE TIGERS BY ARUN KOLATKAR

AJAMIL AND THE TIGERS 
ARUN KOLATKAR

Arun Kolatkar (1932–2004) is a contemporary Indian poet. He was educated in Pune and earned a diploma in painting from the J.J. School of arts, Mumbai. He writes both in English and Marathi and has authored two books. The present poem is an excerpt from Jejuri— a long poem in thirty-one sections. A German translation of Jejuri by Gievanen Bandin was published in 1984.

The tiger people went to their king

and said, ‘We’re starving.

We’ve had nothing to eat,

not a bite,

for 15 days and 16 nights.

Ajamil has got

a new sheep dog.

He cramps our style

and won’t let us get within a mile

of meat.’

‘That’s shocking,’

said the tiger king.

‘Why didn’t you come to see me before?

Make preparations for a banquet.

I’m gonna teach that sheep dog a lesson he’ll never

forget.’

‘Hear hear,’ said the tigers.

‘Careful,’ said the queen.

But he was already gone.

Alone

into the darkness before the dawn.

In an hour he was back,

the good king.

A black patch on his eye.

His tail in a sling.

And said, ‘I’ve got it all planned

now that I know the lie of the land.

All of us will have to try.

We’ll outnumber the son of a bitch.

And this time there will be no hitch.

Because this time I shall be leading the attack.’

Quick as lightning

the sheep dog was.

He took them all in as prisoners of war,

the 50 tigers and the tiger king,

before they could get their paws

on a single sheep.

They never had a chance.

The dog was in 51 places all at once.

He strung them all out in a daisy chain

and flung them in front of his boss in one big heap.

‘Nice dog you got there, Ajamil,’

said the tiger king.

Looking a little ill

and spiting out a tooth.

‘But there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding.

We could’ve wiped out your herd in one clean sweep.

But we were not trying to creep up on your sheep.

We feel that means are more important than ends.

We were coming to see you as friends.

And that’s the truth.’

The sheep dog was the type

who had never told a lie in his life

He was built along simpler lines

and he was simply disgusted.

He kept on making frantic signs.

But Ajamil, the good shepherd

refused to meet his eyes

and pretended to believe every single word

of what the tiger king said.

And seemed to be taken in by all the lies.

Ajamil cut them loose

and asked them all to stay for dinner.

It was an offer the tigers couldn’t refuse.

And after the lamb chops and the roast,

when Ajamil proposed

they sign a long term friendship treaty,

all the tigers roared.

‘We couldn’t agree with you more.’

And swore they would be good friends all their lives

as they put down the forks and the knives.

Ajamil signed a pact

with the tiger people and sent them back.

Laden with gifts of sheep, leather jackets and balls of

wool.

Ajamil wasn’t a fool.

Like all good shepherds he knew

that even tigers have got to eat some time.

A good shepherd sees to it they do.

He is free to play a flute all day

as well fed tigers and fat sheep drink from the same

pond

with a full stomach for a common bond.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE BY JOHN KEATS

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE 

JOHN KEATS

John Keats (1795–1821) was one of the greatest of the younger generation of ‘English Romantic’ poets. He started his career as an apprentice to a surgeon but soon gave it up for poetry. His poetic career lasted for only four years but, during this short span, he evolved from an ordinary poet to an exceptionally mature poetic force. His poetry celebrates beauty, which he considered the ultimate truth. It is portrayed in extremely sensuous images that have been created through beautiful verbal pictures. The image of the nightingale’s bower in the poem is an apt illustration of the poet’s craft in this respect.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE BY JOHN KEATS

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness

pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had

drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had

sunk:

’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness,

That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows

numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been

Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt

mirth!

O, for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world

unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest

dim.

***

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never

known

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other

groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray

hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin,

and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous

eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal

Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was

heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a

path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick

for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;

The same that oft-times hath

Charm’d magic casements, opening on the

foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

***

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still

stream,

Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

FELLING OF THE BANYAN TREE BY DILIP CHITRE

FELLING OF THE BANYAN TREE 
DILIP CHITRE

Dilip Chitre (1938–2009) was born in Baroda. He writes poetry both in Marathi and English. Travelling in a Cage, from which the poem selected here has been taken, was published in 1980. Apart from poetry, Chitre has also written short stories and critical essays. An Anthology of Marathi Poetry 1945–1965 is one of his most important works of translation. He sees poetry as an expression of the spirit. He lives and works in Mumbai.

My father told the tenants to leave

Who lived on the houses surrounding our house on the hill

One by one the structures were demolished

Only our own house remained and the trees

Trees are sacred my grandmother used to say

Felling them is a crime but he massacred them all

The sheoga, the oudumber, the neem were all cut down

But the huge banyan tree stood like a problem

Whose roots lay deeper than all our lives

My father ordered it to be removed

The banyan tree was three times as tall as our house

Its trunk had a circumference of fifty feet

Its scraggy aerial roots fell to the ground

From thirty feet or more so first they cut the branches

Sawing them off for seven days and the heap was huge

Insects and birds began to leave the tree

And then they came to its massive trunk

Fifty men with axes chopped and chopped

The great tree revealed its rings of two hundred years

We watched in terror and fascination this slaughter

As a raw mythology revealed to us its age

Soon afterwards we left Baroda for Bombay

Where there are no trees except the one

Which grows and seethes in one’s dreams, its aerial roots

 Looking for the ground to strike.