Running Away
Posted: 22 December 2003
Word Count: 249
|
Font Size
|
|
Did Herodotus
run away
when he entered the head
of Harpagus
seeking revenge
against Astyages
for making him eat his own son?
Did he drink with his eyes in disgust or in wonder?
Did he see the Scythians
glorious in battle,
drinking from the skulls of their enemies?
Or was it all hearsay
An accidental eavesdropping
on gossip
amongst the merchants
and travellers
of the
Hellenic world?
When Niccolai Mannucci
As a boy
Hid inside a ship
In Genoa,
Was he really
Running towards adventure?
Or away
from himself?
Was it brave
To fight
In Dara Suko’s
Army?
Or
Is bravery
Just something
You find yourself in?
When
Beatrix Potter
Stopped
Running
across
Lettuce fields
And boiling dead bodies
When she
Started
Writing letters
Instead
That
Grew
Into books
Was she
Running
Into herself
Or away
Escaping,
The only way
She could?
When I
Find myself
Cutting vegetables
In London
While gazing
At Kanchenjunga
Through the mist
When the brilliant green
paddy fields in April
Witness
the cows
amongst the pumpkins
When the boats
full of goats
Float
Along
the flooded banks
Of the Burhiganga,
When I
Yearn
To be consumed
By the
Ancient branches
Of the
Banyan tree
When the daftest
British humour
When
Cherpy chappies
Seem charming
In China
With
Americans
Am I
Running away?
Or not
Running
At all?
Where can
you go
To shed
Your
Rattle skin?
To
Run
Away?
To
Find
Yourself
Again?
---Jib, 11.27pm, Fri 24 Oct 2003. In my room in London
|
Comments by other Members
| |
 olebut at 10:49 on 22 December 2003
 Report this post
|
Jib
a very big WOW
fantastic imagery thank you for sharing it
take care
david xx ;)
| |
dr_mandrill at 16:31 on 22 December 2003
Report this post
|
Hello Jib
I like this a lot. It's exciting. Those epic scenes make me giggle with a nervous excitement.
And I like poems with question marks at the end 'cos they flatter me that I might know the answer.
dm
| |
Fearless at 18:57 on 22 December 2003
Report this post
|
Jib
I like the kaleidoscope imagery, the story, the places you had me revisit on this grey evening. It's time to lose myself within that thing I loosely term my being. Thanks bro'
fearless
| |
Jibunnessa at 12:14 on 23 December 2003
Report this post
|
Thanks guys. Glad you like the poem.
Very interesting, Dr Mandril, what you said about question marks flattering the reader. Had never occured to me before. But, now you mention it, I can see what you mean.
Anyway, thanks for the comments re epic/keleidoscopic scenes.
Well, keep on giggling guys. And happy new year.
---Jib
P.S: Fearless, I'm a sis, not a bro.
| |
Fearless at 13:30 on 23 December 2003
Report this post
|
Jib - to me, the World is a giant LadyBlokey. Have a great Christmas sis'
fearless
| |
sourcebook at 08:13 on 27 December 2003
Report this post
|
Hi Jib. Yes this is you. Did you know there are other poems with this title, including one on this site? But I recognise your voice and wit in this. I love it, and I've clearly got a lot of other reading to catch up on now that I've found you.
Take care,
Mark (aka Sourcebook)
| |
Jibunnessa at 09:26 on 27 December 2003
Report this post
|
Hey Mark
Glad you love the poem. And, it's always good to see the word wit associated with your work. So, thanks mate.
---Jib
| |
 James Graham at 11:24 on 03 January 2004
Report this post
|
Well, Hogmanay's over and your poem's been on my desk all this time. (Was I running away from it?) I'm going to take a little longer over it though, partly because Herodotus, Harpagus and Astyages sent me off on one of those binges of looking up things on the internet - including the Herodotus website! The story I was told as a child, of the massacre of the innocents by King Herod, the murder of all the children so as to destroy the one child that was going to threaten the established order, was presented as if it was historical truth - whereas it almost certainly never happened. Instead, it's something much more interesting - part of a recurring myth found in different cultures. All the male children of Devaki are murdered, and only Krishna survives by a miracle. The child Abraham is saved too in a similar massacre of the newborn. And Cyrus is supposed to have been murdered on the orders of Astyages but is saved because he's exchanged for the stillborn child of a cowherd and his wife. It goes on and on. There's Oedipus too, dumped on a hillside and coming back to kill his own father and marry his own mother. I'm not sure yet (I'll think about it) what you mean when you ask if Herodotus was running away when he told this story. Do you mean he was telling an old story second-hand instead of getting to grips with reality?
On my internet binge I couldn't find anything on Niccolai Mannucci. That could be an interesting story too. Who was he?
I'll get back to you. I'm still turning over the implications of running away, in the different contexts you present it. All the best for 2004.
James.
|
|
| |
Jibunnessa at 17:19 on 10 January 2004
Report this post
|
Hi James,
Glad the poem's provoked such curiosity and interest.
However, I have to say that often when I write poems, I don't like to explain things afterwards too much. I'm happy for them to either speak for themselves or remain allegorical and cryptic. But, all i can say is that I don't mean that Herodotus is telling an old story second-hand.
As for Niccolai Mannucci, he hid on a boat in Genoa as a young boy looking for adventure, and was befriended by an English gentleman fleeing from Oliver Cromwell's army. They went to Turkey, China and India amongst a number of places. And it was in India that he stayed for a number of years and even fought in Dara Suko's army for a bit. He kept a diary of his travels, and this was published in 4 volumes as the 'Storia do Mogor' in Italian.
William Irvine translated this into English. And then, early last century, his daughter, Mary, condensed this into a single volume offering, calling it the 'Pepys of Mughal India'.
I did have an original copy of Mary Irvine's single volume dating from early in the last century, and would have offered to send it to you now. However, having found William Irvine's 4 volume version in a book shop in Dhaka's New Market, I gave it away ...to another guy called James.
Hope he's looking after it, as it's an original old book. The 4 volume one I bought from New Market, on the other hand, isn't.
If you do want to look up stuff on him, I've also seen his name written as 'Niccolo Mannucci' and 'Niccolao Mannucci'.
Anyway, hope this helps.
And, please do let me know what you actually thought of the poem.
Did you like it?
---Jib
| |
James Graham at 11:53 on 11 January 2004
Report this post
|
Thanks for the note on Niccolai Mannucci. You're quite right not to want to explain a poem but leave it open, except sometimes if the reader knows nothing at all about the person or subject the poem refers to, there's a kind of blockage there, something that won't open up. It's certainly not that any good poem should ever open up completely, all cut and dried, because then it would be dead. Anyway, not knowing about Mannucci was just one reader's problem (mine) and somebody else might recognise the story right away - and the poem does give enough of a sketch of his story for us to get the general idea.
I do like this poem, though maybe not as much as other poems of yours that I keep going back to - especially 'Silence' and 'The Fly'. I'm not sure I can give comparative reasons of technique and stuff like that. It's subjective. Maybe the questions about running away don't quite ring bells with me as they might with other readers. But the poem has quality, in the way you take a familiar phrase, a familiar question that we ask ourselves, and open it up to lots of new meanings - or new questions. And it's broad in scope - another quality in your work that I've noticed before, how you take images and references from all over the world and from different times. And I like the way the poem visually narrows down, like a river running backwards, broad in the historic/legendary sections and narrower with the individuals Beatrix Potter and yourself. The best effect (among others) of the very short lines at the end is 'Away?' five lines from the end. The word appears like an exhibit, we have to look at it and ask again what this simple word means. Where is 'away'? Is it in the world of some kind of escape, which can turn out not to be an escape at all? Is it somewhere physically or imaginatively 'not here'? How can we, living inside our skins - our 'rattle skins' - ever be 'away'?
So that's some of what I get out of this poem. Sometimes I wish Write Words readers would go into more detail in their responses, so that a poem like this would get a bit more of the study it deserves.
James.
|
|
| |
Jibunnessa at 14:31 on 11 January 2004
Report this post
|
Thank you so much James for your considered response. I'm so glad you got this much from my poem. I like the river imagery you mention. I hadn't really consciously thought about it. But, I can see what you mean.
I also think 'Silence' and 'The Fly' are better poems.
---Jib
| |
| |
Comments by other Members
