Tuesday, March 22, 2011

The Necklace


 Contact author at  guyind@rcn.com
This is a poem that talks about illusion, arrogance and determination. We sometimes look only into our world, forgetting that there exists a bigger and better worldIf we live in arrogance that we are the best without looking at other possibilities, we will be like the nugget that never becomes a jewel. We must go on difficult journeys if we want perfection.   

THE NECKLACE

by Churaumanie Bissundyal  

Once in the heart of a mountain there lived two nuggets
glowing in their splendour, proud and jeering.
To the stars they even swaggered
that their hidden lustre
was greater than their brilliance.
And they laughed at the moon
of its waxing and waning,
of its yielding to the earth and sun
by its size changing
from quarter to half,
then from three-quarters to full, to darkness demeaning.

One day, in their vain boasting,
the sun said to them, singing:
“O fair nuggets of the mountain!
Your nature is greater than your illusion,
than your centuries of brilliance.
None sees your beauty except your vanity;
none sees your glory save your own flattery.
Then come out of the mountain
and let the rain wash your face
and the grass touch your toes.
Leap out to a better dawn
that the wind may blow the dust away from your eyes
and the trees may garland you with their flowers,
that the rivers, too,
may sing your song with joy.”

“No!” said the first nugget, screaming.
“I will not show my beauty
to the stench of a world disgraced, demeaned.
The rain and wind
shall not kiss my face,
save the realm of this mountain.”

The second nugget thought it over
and reviewed the sermon of the sun.
Then to the first nugget he said:
“I have considered the words of the sun, my brother.
It is true and fair that all we know
is this little hole of this mountain.
The greatness we gain is only the empire of our pride.
We have not seen the other side of the world;
we know not the frontier between pain and pleasure.
We are two cowards lying among these ugly rocks,
building false castles in our glory and splendour.
It is now fair for me to declare
that my heart is bent on farewell to my spell of illusion,
a parting from you, my brother,
to seek the pains and gains of other worlds.”

The first nugget became angry and said:
“ Foolish you are,
because you are lured by the oratory of the sun.
You have not yet learnt to discern
between the foulness of the heart
and the flavour of the tongue.
Then, if you go, my brother,
you’ll be a traitor to my love.”

The second nugget laughed and cried:
“What we have achieved these four centuries
except a little growth in size?
Why would these minerals and stones weep in shame,
since we add nothing to their pride?
Are we not only burdens to our conscience
that we have not fulfilled the will of the beautiful
to reach the ultimate of the jewel?”

So said,
the second nugget turned his face from his brother,
rolled out of the hole
and made himself visible on the road.
He waited there in anguish and fear;
days passed him whipped by the wind,
scorched by the sun,
drenched by the rain and tormented by the thunder.
Yet there was hope in his eyes,
until a hunter came and found him at sunrise.

The hunter gasped in delight
and took him to his hut and showed him to his wife.
When she saw the nugget, she danced a little carnival,
betraying her longings, deep and volatile.

The village heard
and the news went far and wide,
so far that it stirred envy and greed,
every cheat, every thief, charting his own design.

Then, one night
a thief came and stole the nugget from the hunter,
and, before sunrise,
he hid him in a dirty ditch of toads and crocodiles.
A crocodile, in an error of carrion,
swallowed him for food
and kept him in his putrid stomach
The nugget wept in the stench and darkness,
a terrible penitentiary for jewel of his kind.
But in surrender he did not yield,
for he remembered the little hole in the mountain
where he had been and the big world he must find.

Then, one day, the crocodile,
in its search for food,
came to shore in pursuit of a deer.
The hunter, in his remorse of loss,
was passing the scene of despair,
and when he saw the crocodile’s intent to devour,
he alerted the deer for cover
and trapped the vicious predator,
killed it and had it disembowelled:
deep inside the putrid filth the nugget was recovered.

The hunter kissed the nugget many times,
embraced him gently,
took him to a jeweller
and sold him for a great price.

The jeweller dropped on his knees
and wept in jubilant vengeance,
vowed to make a unique jewel out of this nugget
to win fame and approbation.

In the hottest fire,
he put the nugget to burn
and bathed him with acid to burnish his colour.

He beat the nugget with a strong hammer
and persisted with violent labour
to bring out the nugget’s charm and splendour.
He beat and beat and said to himself
that this nugget must pay the price
for all his misfortunes over the years.
But the nugget bore the torture,
endured the jeweller’s curse and sneers,
reflecting on the words of the sun.
Then the jeweller began to cut and file the nugget,
cut and file,
not caring for the nugget’s pain,
put him in a mould,
cursed when he would not form,
broke him to pieces again,
cut and filed with greater strain
until the shape of a necklace was formed.

Alas!
The jeweller smiled and said:
“Nugget, I’m sorry for the process of your torture,
but I have transformed you into a jewel
that shall make you into a monument of wonder,
a special gladness to the eyes
that will cleanse the ugliness of the mind,
enshrining your tale of sufferings with gilded phrases
on everything out of beauty born.
I must wash your pendants with my tears
for you have brought me to immortal fame.
I had taken your sufferings and covered all my shame,
all my lackings and frustrations,
and have now myself clad with the lustre
of your nature and name.”

One day the queen of the jungle
wanted to form herself into elegance
in contest with the other worlds.
She took the rivers, creeks and streams
and weaved them into a flowing cascade to make her hair.
She took the mountains
and made them her body,
the savannahs, her body line,
the rapids and falls, her arms and legs.
She took the smiles from a child’s face
and made them her eyes,
the trees, her raiment green,
the clouds, her eye-brows,
the red oleander, her lips,
the frangipani, her nails.
She took the song of the hanaqua bird
and made it her voice.
Then she pulled down the stars
and made them her earrings,
the sun and moon, her bracelets and anklets:
her rhythmic dance formed
from the gait of the chow-chow bird.
But still she felt sad,
because her beauty was not complete,
her neck was bare.

She flung herself in the court of the green heart trees
and wept for weeks
and would not stop weeping,
though the deer came and wiped her tears
and the bluesaki tried consoling her with a sweet song.

But she wept
and flung away all her jewellery
of the moon, stars and sun
and tore her hair of rivers, creeks and streams,
until the jaguar came and bowed to her
and said: “Beauty fawn-eyed of this jungle green,
my heart suffers when I see your tears.
Tell me, O beauteous Queen,
how could I soothe the wounds of your grief?”
“ Bring me a necklace,” she said,
“that I may contest the beauty of the other worlds.
Tell the king that I must have this jewel,
even at his life’s peril,
that I may burnish my regal being.”

The jaguar told the king,
who went and sought the treasure.
Days passed until he met the jeweller,
and happy he was when he saw the necklace of splendour,
that quickly he bought it with diamonds
and gave it to his queen.

She became bright with life again
and looked lovelier than before;
she made the sun shine brighter
and, the trees, with life greener,
that the mountains, seas and rivers
became part of the heavenly plain.

And in this resplendence she danced,
prancing to the mountain where the nuggets had been.
When the first nugget the sound of the music heard,
he loooked outside his hole
and saw the queen dancing,
embellished with the universe,
a lovely necklace around her neck hanging.
He had seen nothing as beautiful as this before
and wondered where this jewel had been.
How would he know
that that was his own brother
who had lived with him for years
in the same hole of the big mountain!

But the necklace could not bear
to see his brother in such torture.
Thus, he smiled and said to him,
his heart impassioned, filled with fervour:
“Do you recognize me, O brother, your own brother,
who has lived with you for centuries together,
the same couched shared,
the same food and water consumed?
You recognize me not, O brother
because through the mill of forbearance I have passed
and stench, darkness, curses and beatings I have endured.
I wept in silence and to none I complained,
but I thought of you in your little hole,
and even in my torture before the fire

I wept in shame. I wept with my tears flung to the wind,
my heart sunk in despair,
‘cause, my brother,
the jewel inside of you
you refuse to find.
But it is not too late to greet your soul.
Come out of your little hole.
Kill your conceit and arrogance,
and seek the higher world,
face the torture and tyrannies of evil men,
for, without pain, the jewel in you
you can never find.”


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