Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher By Nissim Ezekiel

A brief introduction of the poet:

Nissim Ezekiel is an Indian Jewish poet and playwright, born in Bombay, Maharashtra in 1924. His father was a professor of botany and mother was principal of her own school. 

Ezekiel was inclined to poets such as T.S. Eliot. Yeats, Ezra Pound in his school days. His formal use of the English language was linked to colonialism and resulted in controversy. 

He did not much care for verse in his own language and, as he grew up, his writing attracted controversy. It was seen as too close to the old colonial influences by many radicals in India. 

He attended Wilson College and, in 1947, he gained a first class honours degree in literature and immediately started teaching English Literature. 

His first collection of poetry ‘Time To Change’ was published by Fortune Press (London) in 1952. His poetry has all the elements of love, loneliness, lust, and creativity. Ezekiel went on to join The Illustrated Weekly of India as an assistant editor in 1953. ‘Sixty Poems’ was his next book followed by ‘The Unfinished Man’. 

Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher by Nissim Ezekiel 

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.

Analysis: 

How does one become a poet? Nissim Ezekiel in this poem carefully answers this question comparing a poet to a lover and a birdwatcher. According to me the main focus of the poem is on ‘how a poet becomes a better poet if he waits for his words’. 

Let’s now look into the poem.

In the first stanza, the poet is describing how a bird watcher or a lover should conduct himself if he wants to study birds or wants to become a lover. A bird-watcher should not force himself or hurry, pacing hither and thither but should be still and wait and give some time, only then he will be able to capture the moment. That's how one should observe birds or please women. Same goes with the poet as well, even he should wait for the right word for the right emotion to get the poetry out. 

For a bird watcher, it’s not about hunting down or exercising his power on the another but it's about being patient and relaxing oneself and only then a bird watcher can observe bird’s delicate movement otherwise he would miss. Also, with a woman, if the lover never forces himself upon her and just waits for her respond in return only then a woman will risk in surrendering herself to the lover. And if the poet just observers the surrounding around him without interrupting the nature by his talk or movements only then he would be able to capture everything in his poems. 

In the second stanza, the poet is emphasising on the slowness. He says if the poet, the lover and the bird-watcher take it slowly and observe cautiously they would end up observing deeper. The more time they take the more clarity they would get. He says that it’s not that easy to get a glimpse of a rare bird, for that to happen one should go in search of it walking through the desert lanes or flowing rivers. In silence one has to pass the shore the remote, dark lanes of the forest where light cannot reach, he should be able to take the road which will not be easy to walk it might be thorny but one has to go through the struggle to be a bird watcher.

Likewise only then a woman's heart will melt and she would reciprocate to her lover when he struggles by flesh and bone to pass through the darkness of his heart and goes deep into to find a sense of fulfilment. 

The poet is making it vaguely clear that for a woman to love a man she doesn’t only seek physical pleasure but she wants her man to be able to dive down deep into her soul. 

Similarly when a poet is patient and wait for his words to come to him organically to fill up his poem only then a poet’s purpose is found and his composition will come alive, so alive that even a deaf man can hear and a blind man could find light in it.

To summarise we can say that one who observes nature in his own time and get inspired by it, only he can become a poet. One who waits patiently for a woman to love him back only then her comes to a lover and one who sits still without moving or making any sound only then he can become a bird watcher. It is evident in this poem that what all of them need according to the poet is ‘Patience’. If one has patience only then one can become a poet or a lover or a bird- watcher.