Malinda Words: What makes oxygen breathable?

A young girl, interviewing me for some program at her school, asked if my poetry has had an impact. I said I didn’t know. I know that Cesare Pavese (1908-1950), one of the most influential Italian writers of his time, not only believed that his first book of poems, ‘Lavorare stanca’ (literally ‘Work is exhausting,’ translated as ‘Hard Labour’) was his most significant literary achievement, he even said towards the end of his life that ‘it might have saved a generation.’ I doubt, though, that saving anyone framed he exercise of writing.

Writers and indeed artists rarely sweat over the impact of their work. They are, for the most part, indulging in self-exploration, attempting to come to terms with the world around them and the universes that reside, move and interact with one another within themselves And yet, they do transform, if not the world then at least a few of those who encounter their work.

There are writers who inspiredus. There are books that delight and inform. There are words that are unforgettable. There are things we have heard we not only remember but which have helped shape the way we see the world, craft the philosophical tenets we are guided by.

We don’t ponder the relevant etymologies, histories and back stories of, let’s say, guide-lines we use as referents, consciously or intuitively. These things didn’t and don’t fall randomly from the sky, they don’t float by in happy and coincidental breezes so that we can grasp and pocket them, they don’t arise at a preordained moment and place. And yet, someone must have said it one day, someone must have repeated, someone may have added color and texture, someone may have translated it into a known language and someone must have recorded it in one form or another.

Last night I came across a book about poetry and how it transforms, ‘Ten Windows: how great poems transform the world,’ by Jane Hirshfield. In these essays Hirshfield, a poet herself and one time Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, ‘unfolds and explores some of the ways in which poetry is language that torments revolutions of being.’ A single line, absolutely poetic, sums up the book for me: ‘oxygen is available; so long as the poet is speaking, it can be breathed.’

The poet then, is an enabler of breathing. Of course, all this is metaphoric. After all it is not the case that people got asphyxiated for want of poetry. Oxygen is life breath, though, and sometimes we realise we are alive and we find ways of living or rather we understand life’s sweeter, tender and endearing essences and conduct ourselves more gracefully simple because we read a particular poem, watched a particular movie or were movement by a singular movie-moment, were struck by a particular chord of music or a singular line or splash of color in a painting.

It is not always deep and philosophical, not always a startling revelation shared. Sometimes it is a simple word, line or verse that moves, makes us tremble and gets etched in memory. In fact, for me, it has almost always been a simple thought said in a simple way and yet so beautifully crafted that it makes me think, ‘couldn’t be said better, couldn’t be said any other way.’

නුඹ කුඩා දරුවෙක් ය
වී කරළකින් උපන්
වැහි බිඳුවකින් උපන්
සඳ කිරණකින් උපන්...
කිරි ගොයම් කිති කවා මද පවන් සිනා සේ
නුඹ මගේ හදවතේ නිසසලේ ගිම් නිවයි

You are a child,
born of a rice-stalk
born of a drop of rain
born of a ray of sunlight…
a breeze tickles the tender rice shoots
and laughs
and you, in my heart, recline and rest.

Adoration. Love. Confirmation of the known in ways unanticipated. Oxygen that exists, whose existence is known, and yet has suddenly become breathable.

All kinds of oxygen, all kinds of life-breath, all kinds of life-things known to exist but not necessarily acknowledged have been rendered breathable by poets and other artists. Pablo Neruda brought the vibrancy of Macchu Picchu back to life in his ‘Canto General.’ He made us breathe the oxygen of history congealed into stone, frilled with archaeological narrative and absented of people.

Show me your blood and your furrow;
say to me: here I was scourged
because a gem was dull or because the earth
failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.
Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,
the wood they used to crucify your body.
Strike the old flints
to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips
glued to your wounds throughout the centuries
and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

He spoke on behalf of the ‘dead mouths’ of men and woman unnamed and therefore condemned to anonymity and indeed non-existence. Oxygen, again, the breathing of which may save a generation. Or, just me, simply.

malindadocs@gmail.com.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

18 June 2023

What makes oxygen breathable?

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