Day to day [rubai]
From moment to moment and day to day my mood keeps changing
whatever it is that comprises me keeps rearranging
at times the sense of love prevails at times it dwindles
are we designed for ardency? or built for estranging?
whatever I'd hoped to learn I have not yet discovered
whatever I'd feared would burn I have not yet recovered
the simplest fact of being alive has fiction bested
except perhaps when we discern how truth is covered
we initially felt an ambition for film
but somehow it faltered
we originally sought for to sail the brine whelm
but somehow it altered
we primoridally dreamed how we'd live in a palace
and drink cherry tea
we once were disposed to explore the wide road
we somehow got sheltered
============
(Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her essay "'Breast-giver': for author, reader, teacher, subaltern, historian," in Mahasweta Devi, Breast Stories (1997))
That history deals with real events and literature with imagined ones may now be seen as a difference in degree rather than in kind.
The interest of this fine formulation transcends, for me, the particular context of its original presentation. It seems to have diverse, ubiquitous, and perhaps one may say endless applications.
posted by david raphael israel at 1:30 AM
2 Comments:
we were designed to choose, perhaps?
"whatever I'd feared would burn I have not yet recovered"
do i assume what you feared did happen or have you not recoverd from the fear?
ps: you might want to disable the word verification :)
Megha,
I believe I'd intended the first meaning. I'm afraid the line is rather stilted; the poem was (I'd say, now) a not-fully-successful experiment -- obviously the line you quote plays on multiple-syllable rhyming (a technique evidently common in Farsi but rare in English). Sometimes, admittedly, I blog substandard effords. (Or perhaps I should just say, I'm not now in the mindset from which that poem sprang.)
About word verification -- originally I did not have it enabled, for a long time, on this blog. But then (some months ago), suddenly I was deluged with literally hundreds of blog-spam comments within the span of less than one day! -- it was such a bothersome experience, I've had word verif. in force since then. I might try turning it off during a period when I'm regularly online (and not traveling); but such a period isn't at hand right now.
cheers,
d.i.
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