What is the clash of poem ecology
Answers
‘Ecology’ - A. K. Ramanujan
Introduction
A. K. RAMANUJAN (1929-1993) is probably the most well known of Indian English poets who made Indian verse in English internationally popular. He belonged to Mysore in India and taught in many universities in the country. Then he migrated to America. He became a lecture in the University of Chicago in 1962 where he worked till his death in 1993. Most of his works breathe Indian culture and tradition.
'Ecology' is Ramanujan's well known poem. It depicts the blind and innocent faith of an in educated Indian woman. This woman is the poet's own mother. She has great love and respect for the champak trees in her yard. They have been there from the time she could remember and provided basket full of flowers to the women in the family to offer their Gods. But the fragrance of the flowers gave her sever attacks of migraine and so her children decide to cut them down. When she hears about this she flies into a fury and adamantly protests against her children. The poet implies that through her love for the trees, unaware, his mother is becoming a strong spokesperson for the protection of nature and her trees. And the poet himself represents the educated modern man and luxury forgets his duty to nature.
A.K. Ramanujan is devoted to his mother. He is very angry because the flowers of the Red Champak tree caused a severe headache to his mother. Even the breeze and his home cannot protect her from the ill effects of the pollen of the flowers. He decides to cut off the tree.
His mother prevents him. She sees the only positive side of the tree. She says that the tree is as old as her. It gives many flowers to worship Gods and to decorate the girls of the household. It is germinated by the droppings of a passing bird. So, it is a good omen. It may give a terrible headache to one line of cousins.
The poem shows the poet’s strong interest in the family. His mother has a kind of emotional attachment to the tree. That is why she does not allow her son to cut the tree.
The poem
The day after the first rain,
Monsoon.
for years, I would home
in a rage,
Interesting. What are you so mad about, speaker?
for I could see from a mile away
From a mile away, on the way home
our three Red Champak Trees
OUR three red champak trees
had done it again,
meaning they've done it before
had burst into flower and given Mother
her first blinding migraine
first but not last; blinding because of the extent of the pain she's in in
of the season
these migraines last the whole season
with their street-long heavy-hung
yellow pollen fog of a fragrance
The pollen grains have made the air thick like fog - in fact the air IS yellow with it's heady scent
no wind could sift,
the breeze cannot blow away this fog
no door could shut out
and the doors cannot keep it out either. the whole street in front of them is thick with it; it will seep in through the gaps
from our black-
pillared house whose walls had ears
and eyes,
begins personifying the house
scales, smells, bone-creaks, nightly
visiting voices, and were porous
pollen will get in through the holes
like us,
self-explanatory: we will breathe in this fog of pollen
but Mother, flashing her temper
like her mother's twisted silver,
giving the mother's anger some physical quality: shiny, radiant, expressive in her
The storks circle quietly in the sky with motionless wings. It fills the trans- parent sky with its slow, sleepy movements. It reminds the poet of the father's magic carpet story told
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