write a review on the sarojni naidu book the bird time.
Answers
Written by Rachael Norris, 8th June 2020
This week in our special series of Featured Poems, Suvi Dogra, The Reader's London Development Manager, shares her thoughts on The Bird of Time by Sarojini Naidu.
Can you imagine time as a bird?
What a sublime way to express the workings of time through the movements of a bird and nature’s lens - a vibrant canvas! I wondered if the link is made because a bird’s ability to fly is like the flight of time? I found it interesting that at the very beginning a benign quality is accorded to time, ‘fruitful bough.’ We often don’t see time as something fruitful. We tend to lament about the loss or the fast pace of time, but the poet starts from a place of abundance for time, which I found very refreshing.
The first verse seems to acknowledge the dual facets of time, the positive and the negative, an interplay of opposites.
`Of poignant sorrow and passionate strife,
And the lilting joy of the spring'
I think that offers an explanation on the balance the poet is trying to find in the poem. The balance that time is probably supposed to bring -- life and death, sorrow and hope. Death is viewed as a measure of time. There's an allusion to the power of time to create new life through spring, and there's joy and sorrow and hope. Time envelops it all. I find it very lyrical, a song almost.
In this, the poet acknowledges the transient nature of time and even embraces it, but not before seeking the larger answers,
‘O Bird of Time, say where did you learn
The changing measures you sing?’
Here again, time as a bird helps us understand its ephemeral quality. It almost becomes more palatable. Just as we don’t expect a bird to remain still, time too is a wanderer, free from our wishes and desires. Throughout the poem the images of everyday life present time as that which circumscribes life and yet nothing can hold it down. It almost feels time is a keeper of life, it does not govern the quality of it but ensures it rejuvenates and renews.