“The brightness of the day becomes
The brightness of the night
The fire becomes the mirror.”
AVERNO
Averno,
There was a lake in a distant country. And an author got inspired by it. I can say such at most. A distant country, if I roughly guess; this small Crater Lake must be at least six thousand kilometers away from my study. While people around this lake must be expecting or relishing a Mediterranean winter right now, I hope not so cold one, I am sitting around 14 degrees outside my room, intermittently rubbing my hands while typing. Inside the room, the mercury plummets a bit sharp in the capital, at least in my case sometimes! You must know this fact that this lake Averno, was regarded by the ancient Romans as an entrance to the underworld.
I started reading this book on one starry night when there was so much light outside even at night and I knocked it off quick, without searching hither and thither; if I put it together there was no procrastination. This Nobel award-winning author pushed me from pillar to post in her craft in a very fruit-bearing manner, as if just in a moment I traveled the whole world of the verse-maker, entering through an alcove of novelty. Though I did not reach any underworld like Romans; yet this book was the world of gravitas for me.
Such simple and intense was the writing. And such a profound piece of solemnity in verse!
Even if I did not get impressed by the structure of the poems most of the time yet I reckon, I have not read too simple and yet too intense as this book lately in poetic form. I was reading her for the first time after her name was set forth in the list of Nobel laureates.
The book is in two parts, the first one with six titles and the second one with eleven titles. Somewhere you will find the poetry of life and death and at times it can leave you on thin ice, you must take care of your own, the precariousness of life and certitude of death takes you to the truth- line of reality and you have to bear it.
She has written about change, she says balm after violence makes no effect to her as violence has changed her.
“Summer after summer has ended Balm after violence;
It does me no good
To be good to me now
Violence has changed me”
At one place she remembers the music of falling snow from her open window, and she sings,
This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring
The light of autumn: you will not be spared.
You will not be spared,
nor what you love be spared.
She ponders over the beauty outside and her helplessness to enjoy it.
“It is true there is not enough beauty in the world
It is also true that I am not competent to restore it.
Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.”
She asserts something and then leaves a question to the reader,
“My friend the earth is bitter
I think Sunlight has failed her
Bitter or weary it is hard to say.”
There is a poem on the goddess queen of the underworld, PERSEPHONE, she has compared her behavior with the modern girls when she went to hell and returned to earth. She talks about life and death, here you will see verses about her soul, she talks to her soul, and you can hear that intense and mild note of her whispering. The sound of such intensified conversations with the self can even blare sometimes. She has written about her mother, sister, and father. Her thoughts embrace nature and landscape. She undulates between the Past and future and talks about the time governed by contradictions in a febrile tone. In a poem, a young girl set the fire to the field of wheat. And She fell asleep in a river and what a wonderful manner the entire scene has been done in verse.
I have adored this book for its intensity and Touch!
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