"Tonight" and "Process" - collected poems by Nissim Ezekiel

       In this blog I have shard my experience of reading a book of poems which I have issued from the library of Department of English.

      

      While reading the second edition of “Collected poems of  Nissim  Ezekiel ”, two poems I liked the most “Tonight” and “Process”.

         

       These two poems reminds me the absurd play “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Becket. The continuous waiting, and during this wait what we are doing? It’s nothing. What we have achieved in our life will not be with us forever; even we are not the same after a minute... thousands of thoughts are floating in our mind and it changes our hope and desires. What we live for? The reason is never the same as it was before a moment, and what we will achieve after waiting? Or we will achieve or not? We have not answers; but we are living with hope to fulfil our desires... though we are aware with the fact that at the end what we will achieve is Death.

Here I have shared the poems.....

Tonight

Tonight I hear my woman breathing

Who loves me till my world is waste,

And leaning over see the child,

The silver nutmeg, golden pear,

Foreseen and seen with clouded eyes.

What fate is this I’m captured by?

The world is for the living, is there more?

Beyond the sure the obvious sea. . . .

I see the legend and the lie,

How in the kiss the eye was cured,

But leaning over see the child

And hear the woman breathing.

I loved until my world was waste.

What fate is this I’m captured by?

The world is for the dying, is there more?

The obvious shore beyond the sea

Process

Just when you give up

the whole process

begins again

and you are as pure

as if you had confessed

and received absolution.

You have done nothing

to deserve it,

you have merely slept

and got up again,

feeling fine

because the morning is fine;

sufficient reason surely

for faith in a process

that can perform such miracles

without assistance from you.

Imagine what it would do

With a little assistance from you!

     The first poem “Tonight” gives us a sense that what the person has achieved in his life and what he is hoping beyond his life, and “Process” suggests that whatever you achieve does not matters but the process of doing it, and encouraging our own self is important. If people cannot help themselves, they can never understand the meaning of life.