Time: ‘A Double-Edged Weapon’: An Overview of Larkin’s Poetry

Synopsis

Time is man’s element as it flows ceaselessly to bring about changes in life. For Larkin, time is a double-edged weapon. It has destroying forces and devastating powers to bring changes in life against human wish. In time’s flow, life, that starts with birth and traverses through childhood, youth, manhood, old age, and decrepitude to culminate in death, turns mortal on one side. It turns life futile or void and fills life with disappointments and frustrations by shattering dreams, expectations, hopes, wants etc in its flow. It has a dual goal as the double-edged weapon to turn life to mortality and futility. Man fails miserably as it conquers him by turning life into mortality and futility: so he concurs with it as a double-edged weapon. Life exists in linear time-dimension and time with invincible powers governs life. It is the mystery or the riddle of time.

Keywords: Life-journey, Double-edged, Mortality, futility, Disappointments, Invincible, Mystery,

In diverse ways, poets, thinkers, and critics deal with time and its inevitable effects on the life of man and nature. Life traverses through time in its inexorable flux as time is man’s element and an undercurrent in life. Man exists in time’s domain and his life is, therefore, rooted in time,

Days are where we live.

They come and wake us

Time and time over. (‘Days’, CP, 67)

    Time flows endlessly like a living river. The use of images: river, wing, train, cock, clock and so on suggest the unstoppable flow of time. The frequent use of present participles in his poems reflects the endless fleet of time. Time moves ceaselessly, making all lives traverse, witnessing changes in them and around in its movement. It is time that does all functions and actions, Kaalah Karoti Kaaryani (dky% djksrh dk;Z.kh)

    All life facts are measured by time or in time as they merge into it as an integral part. Philip Larkin, as man and poet, becomes conscious of time with its invincible powers as the essence of existence: “Something is pushing them / To the side of their own lives” (‘Afternoons’, TWW, 44) .

    For Larkin, life exists in linear-time dimension. It experiences all the changes that time brings about in its endless flow. It enthralls life despite its struggle in evading the hard realities and harsh truths of life:

Life is an immobile, locked

Three-handed struggle between

Your wants, the world’s for you, and (worse)

The unbeatable slow machine

That brings what you’ll get. (‘The Life with a Hole in it’, CP, 202)

    For Larkin, time as a double-edged weapon brings about inevitable changes in life. First, it turns life mortal. Man in childhood looks at future to bring good fortunes. In time’s motion, the future turns into the present to find life dry and desolate and then into the past to be past and gone forever. It is the first power of time as the double-edged weapon to turn the future into the present, and the present into the past, “a past that no one now can share” (CP, 78). Time elapsed and passed will never be regained or reversed: “... its / No sooner present than it turns to past / Right to the last” (‘Next Please’, CP, 52).

    Time’s inexorable flow, on one hand, thus, turns life transient and ephemeral against one’s wishes. It presents mortality to life as time moves and makes it traverse from birth to childhood, youth, middle age, old age, and decrepitude ultimately to culminate in death. In short, life is a journey from womb to tomb in time’s flow. After birth life flows in time, gaining age and traversing towards death as the sign of mortality:

Whether or not we use it, it goes

And leaves what something hidden from us chose,

And age, and then the only end of age.

(‘Dockery and Son’, CP, 152)

    Poets look at time with their distinctive approaches. Larkin, from his agnostic background, has a unique and distinctive perspective in treating time with its ceaseless flow as the destroying force or the devastating element in turning life transient and temporary. He treats time as a destroyer.

    Poets, like Eliot, look at time from its spiritual perspective. For Eliot, time flows endlessly and is always present. Time past, time present, and time future are mutually oblivious. For him, time is both, the creator and the destroyer, as the past enlivens the present and modifies the future:

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past

(‘Burnt Norton’, FQ, ll. 1-3)

The present contains the past and the future as Lord Krishna counsels Arjuna: Time past and time future

What might have been and what has been

Point to one end, which is always present

(‘Burnt Norton’, FQ, ll. 46-48)

For Eliot, the past is not dead. Time is cyclic and the past is enlivened in the ceaseless flow of time:

You shall not think ‘the past is finished’

Or ‘the future is before us’

(‘Dry Salvages - III’ FQ, ll. 21-22)

Eliot believes in the sense of unity of the past, the present and the future in multiplicity, “unity within multiplicity.”1 He believes in his philosophy: “The end is where we start from.” For him, there is rebirth after death in the cycle: birth leads to death through growth but attains rebirth from his spiritual perspective. 

    Larkin is practical and pragmatic unlike Eliot. From his agnostic background, he believes that life exists in time’s domain and becomes mortal in its flow, traversing ultimately to culminate in death, the end of age. There is no life or rebirth after death. He feels that there is vacuum or void after death, causing endless silence. As a result, time in its flux makes man wake up to the reality of mortality:

Endlessly, time honored irritant,

A bubble is restively forming at you tip.

Burst it as fast as we can -

It will give again, until we begin dying.

(‘Dry Point, TLD, 19)

    Larkin wakes up to the consciousness of death more in his old age than in middle age as expressed in ‘Aubade’, which was written in his old age: “Most things may never happen: this one will” (CP, 208). For Larkin, time has a dramatic function in life. Man’s life is turned transient in the flux of time. Man’s vulnerability is due to the approach and inevitability of death.

    In time’s flux, man’s life ultimately advances to culminate in mortality unlike trees that have restorative power. Trees put on tender leaves and shed them every year to restore by means of their restorative power:

The trees are coming into leaf

Like something almost being said;

The recent buds relax and speed,

Their greenness is a kind of grief.

(‘The Trees’, CP, 166)

    Trees have the yearly trick of looking new by means of their restorative power. Man’s life turns transitory and mortal on one hand in time’s flow as the first devastating edge of the weapon.

    For Larkin, time as man’s element and an integral part of his life makes life exist in its domain. Time is not an abstract idea but has multifarious functions, as it is a double-edged weapon to bring about destructive changes in life. The poet tries to fly away from it by rendering it abstract and remote from the actuality of life.

    Time as the double-edged weapon has the second devastating feature to turn life futile. There is futility presented by time to life. Time flows endlessly as an annihilating force and brings about destructive changes. Time incessantly moves and relentlessly destroys our desires, expectations, hopes, and dreams against our choice. In the domain of time, life is a constant struggle and an unstoppable search for meaningful existence. For Larkin, life is prone to become futile in time’s domain. Bruce Martin says that, for Larkin, “Life necessarily means time”.

    Larkin treats time as an unfailing governing force of man’s life. Man becomes time’s thrall all through life. Despite his concurrence with time’s supremacy over man’s life, he does not deify time due to his agnostic background. Unlike him, poets like Milton and Poe, who too agree with time’s powers, personify, and deify time:

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth

Stolen on his wing my three and Twentieth year

(‘On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three’, Poetry for Pleasure, 9)

Science! True daughter of Old Time thou art

Who alterest all things with my passing years

(‘Sonnet-To Science’, Poetry for pleasure, 22)

    Milton bestows the status of spirituality or divinity on time: “Toward which Time leads me the will of Heaven” (‘On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three’, Poetry for Pleasure, 9).

    Time destroys man’s desires, wants, dreams and expectations in its flow to fill life with frustrations and disappointments. Time, as a double-edged weapon, turns life mortal on one side and futile on the other.

    All facts, all emotions and values and dreams are not only measured by time, but they merge into it, becoming one with it. Time as the nucleus theme of his poetry governs life, bringing changes in life.

    Time in its ceaseless flow fills life with a series of disappointments as it diminishes all our expectations, pretensions, desires, dreams, and aims. Hence, life is a series of illusions in time’s domain. The illusory nature of choice in life tends to lead our lives to experience disappointments and frustrations in time’s disruptive force. As Larkin says:

Truly, though our element is time,

We are not suited to long perspectives

Open at each instant of our lives.

They link us to our losses.

(‘Reference Back’, CP, 106)

    All time—present, past, and future—are a source of disappointment and pain in life. In time’s flow, there is always a sense of loss or futility in our lives as our hopes, desires and ideals are shattered. Life never witnesses any success as there is a clash between what we expect and what we realize in the world of reality. We learn the fact that life is a series of illusions and missed opportunities but continue to hope that the future is the harbinger of good fortunes:

Always too eager for the future, we

Pick up bad habits of expectancy.

Something is always approaching; every day

Till then we say.

(‘Next, Please’, CP 52)

    By the time, future becomes present, filling our minds with dissatisfaction and frustration rather than enjoyment and fulfillment as time relentlessly destroys our desires and leaves us, “holding wretched stalks / Of disappointment” (CP, 52) as Larkin says:

We think each one will have to and unload

All good into our lives, all we are owed

For waiting so devoutly and so long.

But we are wrong:

(‘Next, Please’, CP, 52)

    We realize in the incessant flow of time that life has the sense of loss and futility but attains the knowledge of bitter reality because of “bad habits of expectancy” (TLD, 20).

    Our “expectancy”, developed and sustained, dies out and this loss or futility is rarely compensated. Life’s “armada of promises” (CP, 52) is merely a series of illusions in the governance of time. The poem, ‘Triple Time’, states the fact that neither past nor future bestows on our present the sense of meaning because time turns our lives into futility.

    Time, which fills our lives with a series of illusions, is also the illusion of illusions because past is past and uneventful, the present is empty, dry, futile, and void of meaning and the future is unpromising. All time – the past, the present and the future – brings no comfort. As P. R. King says, “... We are also time’s accomplices in the sense that we ourselves employ time as an instrument with which to deceive our selves....”

    Larkin’s idea of time entails a great mystery and reflects the fact that the secrets and wonders of time remain unknown. Time has attracted many literary minds for ages in different ways. How to measure, how it moves and brings about change by shattering our desires, aims, dreams, and pretensions in our lives are the chief functions of time.

    Life is a series of missed opportunities. Hence life is futile, empty, and desolate. The sound of the siren brings in “horny dilemmas at the gate once more” (TLD, 44). David Timms says, “the siren is symbolises of the desolation and emptiness of life due to our wrong choice.” The phrase, “come and choose wrong” (TLD, 44) reflects man’s wrong choice that leads us to the inevitable disappointment in life, “happiness is going” (TLD, 44).

    Time remains the insolvable riddle in life. As man and poet, he confronts the riddle of time. He says, “The passage of time, and the approach and arrival of death, still seem to me the most unforgettable thing about our existence.” Time, in Larkin, as Salem K. Hasan says, “Keeps on pressing heavily upon his thinking as he observes the changes mostly for the worse taking place around him.” The moving force of time becomes the focal subject of his poetry.

    For Larkin, time is not an abstract idea but a double-edged weapon to turn life mortal on one hand and futile on the other. Time is wholly invincible but solely disruptive force of life. His firm conviction is that “our element is time” (CP, 106) and we are inevitable victims of time. As a poet and man, he deals with its destructive forces but not with its healing powers.

Works Cited

Hasan, Salem K. Philip Larkin and His Contemporaries: An Air of Authenticity. London: Macmillan,

1998: 44.

King, P. R. Nine Contemporary Poets. London: Methuen, 1979: 7.

Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems. London: The Marvell Press, 1988.

—. The North Ship (TNS). London: Fortune Press, 1945.

—. The Less Deceived (TLD). Yorkshire: Marvell Press, 1955.

—. The Whitsun Weddings (TWW). London: Faber & Faber, 1964.

—. High Winows (HW), London: Faber & Faber, 1974.

—. ‘Letter to Pasty Strong’. Selected Letters of Larkin. London: Faber & Faber, 1992: 223.

Martin, Bruce. Philip Lakin. Boston: Twayne, 1978, 47.

Published

Poetcrit 36.2 (July - December 2023): 21

Seed’s Autobiography

I am single for my struggle

Yet complete with life full

With vigor and power to fill

In my heart with aims all,

I am one to turn hundreds,

Thousands and lakhs,

Millions and billions,

The microcosm in my miniature

To macrocosm of my stature

In the years and years to come.

To reach my cherished goal

I start my traverse

From the womb of soil, my mother

With the moisture of my father

And the sunrays my well-wisher.

I live tiny but serve many

And all, their hungers,

And their tactile pleasures.

My life is not for my life

But for the lives of all, a sacrifice

Selfless service.

How tiny I am for the yeoman

For lessons to man to be human!

Let all learn from my life.

My journey from the soil

With me sown at the furrow of the plow

To grow in exuberance in glow

In full sheen of floral eminence

Pollination for my renewal

As germination of my children.

Published: Poetcrit 36.2 (July - December 2023) : 185

Triple-facets of Time

Time with its three facets,

The vehicle of three engines to move

At its velocity in its direction

Ever unstoppable, never reversible.

The past, the present, and the future,

In them, life is a play on the stage triple

The present has connectivity

With the past at its back

With the future to its fore.

The past with the store of memoirs,

The failures after constant efforts

As the lessons to teach pessimism,

Lurking in mind unforgettable,

Of the marks on the shores un-erasable

Follows like the shadow to haunt the object.

The future with dreams ever in rise

Leads life in time’s ceaseless flow,

Filled with numerous hopes in glow,

A clear sign of optimism.

A student who failed in the last exam

Tries with all expectations to pass

For the future is the rising sun.

In life, all triple-baked experience

A child, born in the present as a boon

Slowly grows aware of the past behind

And her future before in the present.

Life seems to build a bridge

Between the experience of stark realities

And the unpromising dreams.

The essence of life substance.

Published: Poetcrit 36.2 (July - December 2023) : 183

‘Life in Communion with Nature’: A Study with Reference to DC Chambial’s Select Poems

Songs of Sonority and Hope, “A Memento of Past Memories”:

A Critical Overview of DC Chambial’s Poetry

—Dr. K. Rajamouly—

Professor of English, Ganapathy Engineering College, Warangal (A.P.): E-mail: rajamoulykatta@gmail.com

 

Poets vary from one another in giving shapes to their imagination so that they let their feelings, ideas, observations, dreams, experiences, memories and so on known to the readers in their own ways. The poem is the result of both imagination and creation in sweet synthesis. It is like the lovely lotus coming out of mud and water. The lotus blooms and shines for the delight of the viewers sprouting from mud and water.

The idea that arises in the poet’s mind initially is crude but shapes into a beautiful one in the poetic process like the caterpillar that is rough and rugged in the initial stage transforms into the pretty butterfly. It gets the due poetic shape. Spurting in contact with an object or the experience in an incident or event, it lurks in the poet’s mind in the form of memory, launches its journey in poetic or imaginative process and reaches its goal in the form of a message to the readers. The poem is, therefore, the ripe fruit of imaginative or poetic process in the poet’s mind. The poetic process is natural in the mind of a poet like the tides that touch the shore to leave an indelible mark.    

There dawned a poet with unique and distinctive qualities in the literary firmament to offer his prolific contributions to the world of readers. He is none other than DC Chambial, who has put in rich experience as a poet, critic and researcher for about four decades in the department of education and won several international and national awards for his contributions to literature and criticism. Several collections of poems gushed from his pen to draw the poetic attention of the readers in the contemporary era. Songs of Sonority and Hope, (A Collection of Poems written between 2010 and 2017), is the latest piece to reflect his enormous achievement as a poet. It is resonantly beautiful for its ‘sonority’ and abundantly delightful for its ‘hope’ in the establishment of human concerns and cordial relations between man and man. It is his poetic objective as a man for man in the welfare of humanity and poet for his poetic sonority.

Chambial firmly believes in memory resulting from his experience of events and incidents that got in sensory contact like T. S. Eliot, Nissim Ezekiel, Wordsworth, Robert Frost, Philip Larkin, and so on, who narrate their dreams, or memoires or experiences related to the incidents, conveying all enlightening messages through their poems. In his preface (Poetry, Memory and Dream), he admits the fact: “the poet always banks upon his memory—personal as well as historical. As he gives shapes to his daydreams—that a poem can be best called—he cannot help stop his memory, making in-roads into his poem(s). ... [This] does not sprout from nowhere but has its roots in one’s memory ...” (7)

For Chambial, time fleets ceaselessly turning the future into the present and then into the past. The future that serves as a mystery turns into dreary present. In time’s sojourn, the present turns into the past to serve as a history with memoirs, in the poem “Temple”, he writes:

Flag still flies,

waves and carries the past with it.

A memento of past memoirs.    (17)

And in “That Old Hill”, he expresses the concept of the past to store memories:

The gorge still exists

under the canopy of thick vegetation:

herbs, shrubs and trees

young again

Past: a history.          (19)

                 

The past, in Chambial’s poetry is eventful but not “forgotten boredom” (The Less Deceived 17) as viewed by Larkin. Its memories still cling in mind, establishing its continuity with the present that was once the future as seen from childhood. The past is, therefore, the fountain of memories rises like the ripples to spurt in a flow. The past, the present and the future are interlinked and interrelated but not just mutually juxtaposed and slightly separated. The past lives in the present in the store of memories haunting and chasing the present ever as time past and time present are not separate,

Whenever

past

interferes with the present,

creates tsunamis.              (“Wall-Hanging” 125)

Whether the past creates tears, “tsunamis”, or smiles, on one’s recollection in the present, depends on the experiences in life, but, it can never sever its link with the present. The past, therefore, exists in mind in the form of memories. 

For Chambial, time: the past, the present, and the future, is an experience. In the passage of time, one finds the future with dreams to be a mystery, the present with happenings to be dreary and the past with memories to be a history. Time builds experiences in the form of memories since life flows through time’s course. He experiences time as life that is rooted in time.

DC Chambial profoundly feels and firmly believes that the poem dawns from memory in the process of both imagination and transformation in fusion to turn an idea that the poet gets initially to shape into a poem as it has “its roots in one’s memory”.  The poem rises from “the memory of one’s past life or lives, age or ages, which is termed as ‘Historicity’ or ‘Tradition’” (7), as T.S Eliot calls it. 

For T. S. Eliot, the eternal flow of time enlivens the past as memoirs. For Chambial, memories related to the past establish link with the present as it has its roots in one’s memory. Both the poets believe in the sense of past to exist in the form of memories, histories or traditions.

The past is neither past nor dead for Chambial. Memories related to the past still lurk or cling in mind in the present. He does not feel that the past is past as it makes him recall: “the past, a history”. He is at the same time for the future. So, he eagerly waits for it since it comes with all hopes as the harbinger of good fortunes to fulfill his expectations.

For DC Chambial, memory is the source for a poem to bloom in eminence and spread its technical brilliance and artistic excellence. His concepts of the past and of the future are similar to that of Eliot:

You shall not think the past is finished

Or ‘the future before us’                    (‘Dry Salvages’ Four Quartets 41)

Like T S Eliot, DC Chambial believes in the endless flow of time that is the eternity of time as suggested by revolving sun, “the sun travels to west” (46). It is time to tick on like the hands in the clock that tick on. It flees. One need not notice its endless fleet. This view reflects Larkin’s concept of time: “Whether or not we use it, it goes” (Collected Poems 152).

For Chambial, time is not an abstract idea but a moving force and governing factor. The universal fact of time’s ceaseless flow, “Time ticks on” (46) is the nucleus theme of his poetry. This concept echoes Hans Meyerhoff’s concept of time in Time in Literature: “We are conscious of every second ticking off” (6). 

Life sails in the river of time as life is rooted in the endless passage of time. Time as the moving force makes all move or flow in its course:

In the river of time, flows the upshot

Of whatever falls in its windy current.

Nothing is static.       (“Spark Survives” 140)

The concept of time in its inexorable flow is in Larkin’s poem, “Days”:

Days are where we live

They come, and wake us

Time and time over.                  (CP 67)                                                        

Like Larkin’s concept of time, Chambial’s is also evident in his other poems for its graphic depiction:

Time moves on

Without any nemesis,

Without concern for any one

Like the sage

Detached and poised.     (“Unanswered Questions” 112)

 

The sun had

Set in search

Of new sun.

                     

Sun and shower

in chase since

Eternity.               (“Chase” 25)

 

 

The universal fact of time’s eternity is that the day culminates into the night and the night, the day. The ceaseless flow of time brings about cyclic changes in days and nights. He writes:

The morning sheen

seeped into

the dark of night.      (“Butterflies in Wizened Skies” 33)

The seasons befall cyclic as in Larkin: “Trees are coming into leaf”. Leaves fall as a sign of their woes: “Their greenness is a kind of grief” (CP 166). In place of fallen leaves, there arise new leaves on the stems as the yearly trick of looking new.

In the endless passage of time, seasons change in the cyclic process as Chambial describes in the poem entitled “The Sun Singes” (53). The seasons: summer, rains, autumn, winter and spring in picturesque portrayals are cyclic in nature in the rein of time in endless flow.

The concept of spiritual life and eternity recurs in Chambial’s poetry. Birth culminates in Death and death initiates life, the stage of rebirth as the life in eternity,

Life and death

Complement each other

Like day and night,

Morn and eve,

                   ...        ...        ...

Let’s welcome both

With stoic stance of a seer!                        (“Stoic Stance” 110)

Chambial grows conscious of time and deals with it and its powers. He uses various images: sun, moon, buds, clouds, ocean, sea, water, sunlight, river, rainbow, trees, stars, wind and so on to suggest the incessant movement of time that brings about inevitable changes in life and nature.

Life is rooted in time. Time’s movement is not measured but life is measured in time. Man’s life finds the stages: birth, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, middle age, old age ultimately to culminate in death. Life is, therefore, the yardstick of the stages of birth, growth and death.

Chambial joyously describes the child at birth that initiates life. Parents bring up their babies with all love. He puts it thus:

Parents rock us in cosy arms

Sang sweetest lullabies for charms     (“Live with Winning Thunder” 59)

As a poet and man, Chambial fondly loves childhood. He depicts it as “immaculate and innocent / a drop in itself” (56). For him, childhood is the stage of innocence. He beautifully compares the child to “a drop of water” that “weans solace and / Soothes lips parched, / mouth and throat”. The comparison of a child with a water drop to give life to parched throats and lands is indeed apt and befitting:

Child’s innocence:

the home of paradise,

full of flowery fragrance.

 

Soothing solace,

flowery fragrance,

restore ecstatic bliss!         (“A Drop” 57)

 

Everyone loves childhood, as it is the stage enjoyable and preferable for recollection. Chambial is unique in the depiction of childhood. He excels other poets like the Hindi poet, Subhadra Kumari Chouhan in the description of childhood by her recalling it very often to enjoy its bliss in “Mera Naya Bachpan”: “Baar baar aati hai mujhko madhur yaad bachpan teri” [ckj&ckj vkrh gS eq>dks e/kqj ;kn cpiu rsjh].

Chambial deals with youth filled with verve and vigor, glory and glitz, liveliness and robust spirit, daring and dashing and so on. He feels that God is kind to grant youth to man. He exhorts the race of man to enjoy youth to the extent possible:

We got our prize ordained by fate

Lived life lively, no cause for hate.      (“Live with Winning Thunder” 59)

Youth is the stage to bestow on man sweet memories, as it is the choicest reward bestowed on man. It is Spring, like youth, in life to leave youthful memories for man in the words of John Keats:

... lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring’s honeyed cud of youthful thought he loves (“Four Seasons” 423)

Chambial also paints youth with the lovely colors of his love for youth that is robustly delightful and memorably beautiful:

Glow: full of youth, verve,

Heat, full beautiful; apogee—

Simmers fierce beauty.                 (“Melee of Memories” 79)

 

Man grows ultimately to culminate in death to mark the end of physical life. Chambial believes in spiritual life. From the spiritual point of view, life is with the stages: birth, growth, death and rebirth. In fact, like the law of inertia, life is also energy and it never dissipates; only changes shapes:

Death is sure for the born one;  

Let it come while serving the torn men.

Thus, he served Allah by serving his men.  (“GMG: The Man of Allah” 130)

For Chambial, life that initiates the fate of birth culminates in death, turns into eternity in Time’s flow:

Death is the fate of birth, dusk of the dawn,

Mirth slips into tears, night, of the day.

Creation must end in destruction.

The wheel of Time goes on spinning anon.

                             ...            ...           ...            ...          

A spark survives in the ashes that fly

Urges recoiling souls to peaks beyond.   (“Spark Survives” 140)

           

Chambial deviates from the concept of spiritual life, the rebirth of life, the immortality of life with the soul to merge with the other body when he comments on the transience of life:, “Life is a nine day’s wonder” in both the poems, “Live with Winning Thunder” (59) and ‘Melee of Memories’ (79). He advises man to “make hay while the sun shines” (79). In “Live with Winning Thunder”, he writes:

True, “Life is a nine day’s wonder”

Live it, live with winning thunder!         (59)                       

Chambial feels that life is not a bed of roses. He presents life to be the mixture of tears and smiles, ebbs and tides, ups and downs, pains and pleasures, hells and heavens and so on. He aptly deals with the truth of life:

Between

pain and laughter

lingers life silently.         (“Pain and Laughter” 118)

The poet, Chambial, refers to his belief in fate that governs life. It can make man suffer from “A fatal stroke of fate:” in his poem “An Escapade” (20). Man, treading the wrong path in craze for the spell of money in his poem, “Man for Man”, “Life’s is not money / Money sustains life / Life for Karma” (55). 

The essence of love is the tone and tenor of Chambial’s poetry. It reflects his love for life, love for man, love for woman, love for wife, love for nature, love for soldiers, love for motherland, love for God and so on. The focus and fulcrum of his poetry is love. He excels in the portrayal of love:

The life has been very kind to us,

Measured world to grow without fuss.

God has been so kind to grant this far last.

Let’s save it with sense: to our lot cast. (“Live with Winning Thunder” 59)

and

Love, a sentiment of oneness:

comes unknown all at once.

Known to soul since eternity.                 (“Love Lasts Eternity”109)

 

 

In the poem, “Woman Is a Woman”, his love for woman is apparent when he says that man and woman are complementary to each other. He compliments woman for her “strength in her sinews / in her nerves.” He extols woman for “She’s to show the way / to the WORLD / once again, anew / and lead the world of MAN / from this Hell / to Heaven (120).

Chambial adores God for His free offers like nature, youth, life and all others for the delight of man. He seeks the divine bliss:

Seek solace at the feet of the Lord,

Not to let my mind any malice hold           

                        ...                   ...                 ...

In such an ambience of cosy bliss,

Let mundane senses kiss the divine bliss.              (“Divine Bliss” 94)

The poet enjoys solace and peace in his meditation to God when he spells the most powerful mantra,

Om! Om!  Om!

since eternity.

Solace!                                                                   (“OM” 29)

For Chambial, life is the choicest gift and rarest dream bestowed on man for human life and love for humanity at large. He always wishes it to practice “values; human behaviour” (43).      

Chambial’s poetry is multisided and multifaceted as it marks a rich variety of themes. He, as a poet and man, loves nature like the Romantics as it offers solace to him. His contact with nature leaves indelible impressions and attractions, sweet memories and recollections in him. He wants to become one with the beauty of nature to be away from the stresses and strains of reality:

The tree beautiful

One has to care and love

To transcend tensions in peace.         (“Harried Hurry” 63)

 

Moist air, Earth green

rife with music:

drip-drop, drip-drop.

Mellowed June air                      (“Simmering Song” 35)

 

Long to languish

in this bowl of Nature

and merge with it;                          (“Wingless” 30)  

 

Chambial, as a poet,  loves the sights, sounds and scents and other sensuous gifts of nature. He loves to have contact with nature for its beauty: charms, scent and music for his gaiety.

Let’s live by being closer

To descry

The beauties of nature

In upright stature            (“Plunder the Thunder” 142)

 

The sweetest moment of life:

The star spangled sky. (“Sands of Oblivion” 97)            

Sweet songs

stir the chords

of heart and mind.        (“Wingless” 30)

 

The lovely music that soars with the waves:

Sinks to bed, rises to the face full in heat;

Lilts the loving hearts with the airy beat,

With the symphony of its lovely staves. (“The Symphony” 96)

 

I went up the hill: the hillside

green, decked with multi-hued flowers

entice birds and butterflies all—

a gala of blush and sweet smell.                    (“Tales to Tell” 48)

 

 

For Chambial, nature is the gift offered by God to Man, His supreme creation, for his bliss. It is the heaven-like Eden for Adam and Eve for their paradise. It, therefore, plays the benevolent role for them. The poet gets engrossed in the beauty of nature to swim in the river of bliss:

Look at

the green, smiling

leaf of a tree

                      ...      ...      ...

I wept in happiness,

For His bounty:                (“His Munificence” 136)

 

Looked deep

into the placid water

of noiselessly

flowing river.                                              (“On the Bank” 137)

 

A sweet and beautiful birdie

Hit by the flowery arrows.                                   (“The Bliss” 22)

 

The colours,

tint the Earth, Sky, Sea.                 (“Beauties of This World” 31)

 

 

Chambial loves nature and the annual seasons. His descriptions of the seasons: summer, “the burning sun” in waiting for “Rain’s mirth”; rains to “mollify” the earth; autumn, “solemn in enchantment”; winter, “shivering chill”, spring, “honeyed breath”; are vivid and picturesque. He adores and celebrates spring in his heart:

Spring mellowed with honeyed-breath stirs life:

A celebration of colours all around;

Prickly chill left far behind in life’s strife

To welcome the soft smooth breath that surrounds.     (“The Sun Singes” 53)        

            

In nature descriptions, Chambial refers to numerous objects of nature: sun, moon, light, birds, trees, rivers, oceans, hills, flowers, showers, stars, myna, cuckoos, seasons and so on like Wordsworth.

Chambial is a keen observer but not a silent spectator of the contemporary society. In his observation, he finds it full of evils. He has memorable experiences got in his keen observation of society. He expects man to have social virtues and human values but he does not find any as per his wish. He shares all his feelings with the readers, so that, they feel them like him. The poet and man in him feels profoundly sorry for the evils:    

Heart is heavy

to recount and remember

the lapses made

undeserved and uncalled for.                               (“Remorse” 41)

 

Man has meddled not with morals only,

Dug deep into the bowls of Earth as well;

Has made vulnerable Earth, life, a hell,

In his blind quest for Mammon selfishly.       (“Man for Mammon” 45)         

 

A poet, without responding to social evils and ills, trivialities and frivolities, injustices and irregularities, inequalities and immoralities, vices and prejudices, etc, is not a poet in true sense. Chambial is a poet whose heart aches for all social evils. He, as a poet of social consciousness and moral awareness, responds to all those failings and reacts vehemently protesting against all those in the welfare of the society, he lives in.

The poet finds his land without ethics, values and virtues in the poem, “We Are Living”. Instead, he finds in the land debauchery, larceny, treachery” as “the order of the day” against his wish to find “love and compassion”. He hates the plight in the land,

We’are living in a land

that abounds in

wolves, hyenas and jackals;                                       (51)                       

 

 

In the contemporary society, man has grown over-selfish to have material matters. In the poem, “Man Prefers Matter”, he opines, “Men prefer matter” in “changed values”. The man today wants to become rich overnight “By fair or foul means” (43) without minding any loss and deception to any fellowman as he feels that money is the source for all his pleasures and luxuries. It is the means, for him, to solve all problems to reach his goal.

Money is the sole subject

and for that

they cast lots to decide

who wins this time.            (“Woman in Kitty” 39)

 

The riches sought in this lusty world,

Overnight one longs to pluck the brightest star;  

(“This Lascivious World” 44)

 

In fact, God created man with His message to him to have human concern and cordial relation for man, man-for-man, man’s amelioration but he goes against the Divine will by craving for material possessions and deceitful earnings.

By fair or foul means, one wants to be rich

In no time. One seeks all troves of Solomon,

Connives for this even with demon.        (“Man Prefers Matter” 43)

 

Apart from foul ways of acquiring money, the poet criticises man’s longing for power in the poem, “The Canyons of Time”: “Ever hungry for power, can stoop to any depth” (133). He detests all prejudices in “Heaven on this Earth” calling all the evils “The devils of / Ego, desire, greed” (81).

Man has transformed the paradise-like earth into a hell against the aims and objectives of an ideal society. He cannot replace the hell-like with the paradise-like on earth. Man lost the paradise due to his failings. He has to regain it by means of his virtues and values. It is not possible for him to re-establish values and virtues, as he has turned heartless: “Love is lost in human heart,” (“There Was a Man” 67).

Chambial loves to live and write for man’s enlightenment, for quest of bliss in life. He wishes the world to be peaceful and the people should enjoy peace as in paradise, doing good for the humanity:

The world is too good a place

Where all of us—the human beings

Should live as His happy and sanguine souls

Removing the thorns on the ways,

Make them play with rivers of their tears.

 

Let’s join hands in a chain

In the world to scatter the pollen of chagrin

And usher for all into a new Heaven of happiness.

(“Heaven of Happiness” 132)

Chambial feels that life is a boon bestowed on man to live and enjoy. It is heavenly: the earth is a heaven for man,

The life has been very kind to us,

Measured world to grow without fuss.

God’s been so kind to grant this far last.

Let’s save with sense: to our lot cast.      (“Live with Winning Thunder 59)  

 

 

Like a patriot, Chambial feels that our country is indisputably great as he has love for his nation. Here the poet’s tone is satirical. He never wishes the people of his nation to be violent. Hence, he never wishes the end of life due to violence or killing on the borders in a battle. His patriotic fervor is apparent when he, with all regrets, refers to the killing of soldiers on the borders. He hates violence in the form of murders, rapes and other brutal acts:  

Men are killed on the borders,

Women become widows,

Mother’s laps empty, eyes flooded to tears.

Children without canopy to face the blizzard.   

(“The Canyons of Time” 133)

The valiant soldiers ever awake on the distant borders:

They are men, who stand for truth and suffer long,       

Picketing against enemies and charlatan hoarders,

They are the men: merit honour, make the land strong.

(“The Wounds of Deceit” 146)

 

Politicians make promises assuring the people of their honest rule for the welfare of the people, especially the peasant community but fail to do so to prove that they are responsible for the decline of values and the downfall of their nation. They prove to be traitors, cheats, villains and so on in the mission of coming up overnight:

They are the real villains who become ignorant too

‘East or west, home is the best’: the true balming hand. 

(“The Wounds of Deceit” 146)

Exploitation, coercion and all other evil practices in the society surpass the limits to result in total devastation. The poet expresses his anguish for the horrendous situation by the use of symbolic images of fire and wind:

The wind turns into gale. The fire—wild fire

when they join hands and move in the valleys,

on the hills and mountains. These dances

devastation. Revolution result             (“Song of Sonority and Hope” 147)

When man has forgotten humanity, the love for his race, the poet feels that the restoration of justice is the only alternative to stop violence and bloodshed:

When exploitation and coercion

cross the bounds of humane humanity,

it becomes must for Nature

to restore the natural justice.    (“Songs of Sonority and Hope” 147)        

     

The poet, as a lover of humanity, touches all aspects of social relations with human concerns especially familial and conjugal relations. Wife and husband are essential for the welfare of a family in the way the wings are essential for a bird, for its safe flight. He refers wife and husband as the two wings essential for life. The family has to develop into a good society to enjoy man’s harmonious existence,

Life isn’t a one-winged bird:

It needs two to fly,

To rise to the sky,

To go past the hills and canyons

To taste the pleasures that lie beyond.      (“Plunder the Thunder” 142)

 

As a humanist, he loves his fellowmen and wishes their welfare. He professes the sense of hope and faith for a welcome change. In the light of optimism, there is new sunrise to shatter the thick pall of darkness and to clear the way to evade ignorance resulting from selfishness and greediness for terrestrial possessions. One finds light to lead all to prove worthy as true human beings:  

There is one light bright

beyond the hill,

in the dark, full of lilt

the perpetual home sans guilt

that all crave to own;

the highest good, life’s crown.  (“’Beyond the Yonder Hill” 49)

 

The Earth, created for Adam’s chastisement,

Can be easily transformed into Heaven

If those living here below the firmament

Follow His commands in this haven.         (“’Our Conduct” 96)

The poet ironically talks about the perfidious actions of men in making existence a hell. Such wicked men are busy in destroying the system that seeks to guarantee them comforts of life:

I marvel at their acumen and sound

Daring who make every effort and sweat

To raze the mansion thoughtlessly to ground

That gives them their life’s comforts as life’s treat.     (“I Marvel” 148)

 

Chambial deals with time and its powers, the past as a history in the form of memories and contemporary society. He sets a model to the poets of younger generation by lashing and criticizing the social evils with hopes of man’s transformation into an ideal one. The poet teaches all ideals and principles for man’s harmonious existence.

Chambial’s poetry establishes him as a poet of high accomplishment in the galaxy of contemporary Indian English poets. His poetry is so profound that the reader has to read between the lines to know the inherent thematic beauty in it. Through his poetic prism, he presents the kaleidoscopic variety of themes. It is thought-provoking and soul-stirring with its thematic affluence and artistic excellence. Through his employment of poetic devices like images, similes, metaphors and personifications in Songs of Sonority and Hope, he presents the snapshot details of all the poetic scenes to the readers. The title is so appropriate that we, as readers, enjoy in the bunch of poems the sonority of rhythmic beauty and the poetic vision to reflect his hope in promoting values in the man of the contemporary socio-political scenario.  

Works Cited

Chambial, D.C.  Songs of Sonority and Hope. New Delhi: Authors Press, 2018.

Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New Delhi: OUP, 1971.

Meyerhoff, Hans.  Time in Literature. London: California Press, 1974.

Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems. London: The Marvel Press:  1988.                   .

----. The Less Deceived. Yarkshire: Marvel Press, 1955.

Keats, John. “Four Seasons.” Poetical Works, edited by H.W. Garrod. Oxford Paperbacks. London: OUP, 1973.

Chowhan, Subhadrakumanri. “Mera Naya Bachpan”. https://kavyaalaya.org/mera_naya_bachpan.jpg

Songs of Sonority and Hope, “A Memento of Past Memories”: A Critical Overview of DC Chambial’s Poetry

Songs of Sonority and Hope, “A Memento of Past Memories”:

A Critical Overview of DC Chambial’s Poetry

—Dr. K. Rajamouly—

Professor of English, Ganapathy Engineering College, Warangal (A.P.): E-mail: rajamoulykatta@gmail.com

 

Poets vary from one another in giving shapes to their imagination so that they let their feelings, ideas, observations, dreams, experiences, memories and so on known to the readers in their own ways. The poem is the result of both imagination and creation in sweet synthesis. It is like the lovely lotus coming out of mud and water. The lotus blooms and shines for the delight of the viewers sprouting from mud and water.

The idea that arises in the poet’s mind initially is crude but shapes into a beautiful one in the poetic process like the caterpillar that is rough and rugged in the initial stage transforms into the pretty butterfly. It gets the due poetic shape. Spurting in contact with an object or the experience in an incident or event, it lurks in the poet’s mind in the form of memory, launches its journey in poetic or imaginative process and reaches its goal in the form of a message to the readers. The poem is, therefore, the ripe fruit of imaginative or poetic process in the poet’s mind. The poetic process is natural in the mind of a poet like the tides that touch the shore to leave an indelible mark.    

There dawned a poet with unique and distinctive qualities in the literary firmament to offer his prolific contributions to the world of readers. He is none other than DC Chambial, who has put in rich experience as a poet, critic and researcher for about four decades in the department of education and won several international and national awards for his contributions to literature and criticism. Several collections of poems gushed from his pen to draw the poetic attention of the readers in the contemporary era. Songs of Sonority and Hope, (A Collection of Poems written between 2010 and 2017), is the latest piece to reflect his enormous achievement as a poet. It is resonantly beautiful for its ‘sonority’ and abundantly delightful for its ‘hope’ in the establishment of human concerns and cordial relations between man and man. It is his poetic objective as a man for man in the welfare of humanity and poet for his poetic sonority.

Chambial firmly believes in memory resulting from his experience of events and incidents that got in sensory contact like T. S. Eliot, Nissim Ezekiel, Wordsworth, Robert Frost, Philip Larkin, and so on, who narrate their dreams, or memoires or experiences related to the incidents, conveying all enlightening messages through their poems. In his preface (Poetry, Memory and Dream), he admits the fact: “the poet always banks upon his memory—personal as well as historical. As he gives shapes to his daydreams—that a poem can be best called—he cannot help stop his memory, making in-roads into his poem(s). ... [This] does not sprout from nowhere but has its roots in one’s memory ...” (7)

For Chambial, time fleets ceaselessly turning the future into the present and then into the past. The future that serves as a mystery turns into dreary present. In time’s sojourn, the present turns into the past to serve as a history with memoirs, in the poem “Temple”, he writes:

Flag still flies,

waves and carries the past with it.

A memento of past memoirs.    (17)

And in “That Old Hill”, he expresses the concept of the past to store memories:

The gorge still exists

under the canopy of thick vegetation:

herbs, shrubs and trees

young again

Past: a history.          (19)

                 

The past, in Chambial’s poetry is eventful but not “forgotten boredom” (The Less Deceived 17) as viewed by Larkin. Its memories still cling in mind, establishing its continuity with the present that was once the future as seen from childhood. The past is, therefore, the fountain of memories rises like the ripples to spurt in a flow. The past, the present and the future are interlinked and interrelated but not just mutually juxtaposed and slightly separated. The past lives in the present in the store of memories haunting and chasing the present ever as time past and time present are not separate,

Whenever

past

interferes with the present,

creates tsunamis.              (“Wall-Hanging” 125)

Whether the past creates tears, “tsunamis”, or smiles, on one’s recollection in the present, depends on the experiences in life, but, it can never sever its link with the present. The past, therefore, exists in mind in the form of memories. 

For Chambial, time: the past, the present, and the future, is an experience. In the passage of time, one finds the future with dreams to be a mystery, the present with happenings to be dreary and the past with memories to be a history. Time builds experiences in the form of memories since life flows through time’s course. He experiences time as life that is rooted in time.

DC Chambial profoundly feels and firmly believes that the poem dawns from memory in the process of both imagination and transformation in fusion to turn an idea that the poet gets initially to shape into a poem as it has “its roots in one’s memory”.  The poem rises from “the memory of one’s past life or lives, age or ages, which is termed as ‘Historicity’ or ‘Tradition’” (7), as T.S Eliot calls it. 

For T. S. Eliot, the eternal flow of time enlivens the past as memoirs. For Chambial, memories related to the past establish link with the present as it has its roots in one’s memory. Both the poets believe in the sense of past to exist in the form of memories, histories or traditions.

The past is neither past nor dead for Chambial. Memories related to the past still lurk or cling in mind in the present. He does not feel that the past is past as it makes him recall: “the past, a history”. He is at the same time for the future. So, he eagerly waits for it since it comes with all hopes as the harbinger of good fortunes to fulfill his expectations.

For DC Chambial, memory is the source for a poem to bloom in eminence and spread its technical brilliance and artistic excellence. His concepts of the past and of the future are similar to that of Eliot:

You shall not think the past is finished

Or ‘the future before us’                    (‘Dry Salvages’ Four Quartets 41)

Like T S Eliot, DC Chambial believes in the endless flow of time that is the eternity of time as suggested by revolving sun, “the sun travels to west” (46). It is time to tick on like the hands in the clock that tick on. It flees. One need not notice its endless fleet. This view reflects Larkin’s concept of time: “Whether or not we use it, it goes” (Collected Poems 152).

For Chambial, time is not an abstract idea but a moving force and governing factor. The universal fact of time’s ceaseless flow, “Time ticks on” (46) is the nucleus theme of his poetry. This concept echoes Hans Meyerhoff’s concept of time in Time in Literature: “We are conscious of every second ticking off” (6). 

Life sails in the river of time as life is rooted in the endless passage of time. Time as the moving force makes all move or flow in its course:

In the river of time, flows the upshot

Of whatever falls in its windy current.

Nothing is static.       (“Spark Survives” 140)

The concept of time in its inexorable flow is in Larkin’s poem, “Days”:

Days are where we live

They come, and wake us

Time and time over.                  (CP 67)                                                        

Like Larkin’s concept of time, Chambial’s is also evident in his other poems for its graphic depiction:

Time moves on

Without any nemesis,

Without concern for any one

Like the sage

Detached and poised.     (“Unanswered Questions” 112)

 

The sun had

Set in search

Of new sun.

                     

Sun and shower

in chase since

Eternity.               (“Chase” 25)

 

 

The universal fact of time’s eternity is that the day culminates into the night and the night, the day. The ceaseless flow of time brings about cyclic changes in days and nights. He writes:

The morning sheen

seeped into

the dark of night.      (“Butterflies in Wizened Skies” 33)

The seasons befall cyclic as in Larkin: “Trees are coming into leaf”. Leaves fall as a sign of their woes: “Their greenness is a kind of grief” (CP 166). In place of fallen leaves, there arise new leaves on the stems as the yearly trick of looking new.

In the endless passage of time, seasons change in the cyclic process as Chambial describes in the poem entitled “The Sun Singes” (53). The seasons: summer, rains, autumn, winter and spring in picturesque portrayals are cyclic in nature in the rein of time in endless flow.

The concept of spiritual life and eternity recurs in Chambial’s poetry. Birth culminates in Death and death initiates life, the stage of rebirth as the life in eternity,

Life and death

Complement each other

Like day and night,

Morn and eve,

                   ...        ...        ...

Let’s welcome both

With stoic stance of a seer!                        (“Stoic Stance” 110)

Chambial grows conscious of time and deals with it and its powers. He uses various images: sun, moon, buds, clouds, ocean, sea, water, sunlight, river, rainbow, trees, stars, wind and so on to suggest the incessant movement of time that brings about inevitable changes in life and nature.

Life is rooted in time. Time’s movement is not measured but life is measured in time. Man’s life finds the stages: birth, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, middle age, old age ultimately to culminate in death. Life is, therefore, the yardstick of the stages of birth, growth and death.

Chambial joyously describes the child at birth that initiates life. Parents bring up their babies with all love. He puts it thus:

Parents rock us in cosy arms

Sang sweetest lullabies for charms     (“Live with Winning Thunder” 59)

As a poet and man, Chambial fondly loves childhood. He depicts it as “immaculate and innocent / a drop in itself” (56). For him, childhood is the stage of innocence. He beautifully compares the child to “a drop of water” that “weans solace and / Soothes lips parched, / mouth and throat”. The comparison of a child with a water drop to give life to parched throats and lands is indeed apt and befitting:

Child’s innocence:

the home of paradise,

full of flowery fragrance.

 

Soothing solace,

flowery fragrance,

restore ecstatic bliss!         (“A Drop” 57)

 

Everyone loves childhood, as it is the stage enjoyable and preferable for recollection. Chambial is unique in the depiction of childhood. He excels other poets like the Hindi poet, Subhadra Kumari Chouhan in the description of childhood by her recalling it very often to enjoy its bliss in “Mera Naya Bachpan”: “Baar baar aati hai mujhko madhur yaad bachpan teri” [ckj&ckj vkrh gS eq>dks e/kqj ;kn cpiu rsjh].

Chambial deals with youth filled with verve and vigor, glory and glitz, liveliness and robust spirit, daring and dashing and so on. He feels that God is kind to grant youth to man. He exhorts the race of man to enjoy youth to the extent possible:

We got our prize ordained by fate

Lived life lively, no cause for hate.      (“Live with Winning Thunder” 59)

Youth is the stage to bestow on man sweet memories, as it is the choicest reward bestowed on man. It is Spring, like youth, in life to leave youthful memories for man in the words of John Keats:

... lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring’s honeyed cud of youthful thought he loves (“Four Seasons” 423)

Chambial also paints youth with the lovely colors of his love for youth that is robustly delightful and memorably beautiful:

Glow: full of youth, verve,

Heat, full beautiful; apogee—

Simmers fierce beauty.                 (“Melee of Memories” 79)

 

Man grows ultimately to culminate in death to mark the end of physical life. Chambial believes in spiritual life. From the spiritual point of view, life is with the stages: birth, growth, death and rebirth. In fact, like the law of inertia, life is also energy and it never dissipates; only changes shapes:

Death is sure for the born one;  

Let it come while serving the torn men.

Thus, he served Allah by serving his men.  (“GMG: The Man of Allah” 130)

For Chambial, life that initiates the fate of birth culminates in death, turns into eternity in Time’s flow:

Death is the fate of birth, dusk of the dawn,

Mirth slips into tears, night, of the day.

Creation must end in destruction.

The wheel of Time goes on spinning anon.

                             ...            ...           ...            ...          

A spark survives in the ashes that fly

Urges recoiling souls to peaks beyond.   (“Spark Survives” 140)

           

Chambial deviates from the concept of spiritual life, the rebirth of life, the immortality of life with the soul to merge with the other body when he comments on the transience of life:, “Life is a nine day’s wonder” in both the poems, “Live with Winning Thunder” (59) and ‘Melee of Memories’ (79). He advises man to “make hay while the sun shines” (79). In “Live with Winning Thunder”, he writes:

True, “Life is a nine day’s wonder”

Live it, live with winning thunder!         (59)                       

Chambial feels that life is not a bed of roses. He presents life to be the mixture of tears and smiles, ebbs and tides, ups and downs, pains and pleasures, hells and heavens and so on. He aptly deals with the truth of life:

Between

pain and laughter

lingers life silently.         (“Pain and Laughter” 118)

The poet, Chambial, refers to his belief in fate that governs life. It can make man suffer from “A fatal stroke of fate:” in his poem “An Escapade” (20). Man, treading the wrong path in craze for the spell of money in his poem, “Man for Man”, “Life’s is not money / Money sustains life / Life for Karma” (55). 

The essence of love is the tone and tenor of Chambial’s poetry. It reflects his love for life, love for man, love for woman, love for wife, love for nature, love for soldiers, love for motherland, love for God and so on. The focus and fulcrum of his poetry is love. He excels in the portrayal of love:

The life has been very kind to us,

Measured world to grow without fuss.

God has been so kind to grant this far last.

Let’s save it with sense: to our lot cast. (“Live with Winning Thunder” 59)

and

Love, a sentiment of oneness:

comes unknown all at once.

Known to soul since eternity.                 (“Love Lasts Eternity”109)

 

 

In the poem, “Woman Is a Woman”, his love for woman is apparent when he says that man and woman are complementary to each other. He compliments woman for her “strength in her sinews / in her nerves.” He extols woman for “She’s to show the way / to the WORLD / once again, anew / and lead the world of MAN / from this Hell / to Heaven (120).

Chambial adores God for His free offers like nature, youth, life and all others for the delight of man. He seeks the divine bliss:

Seek solace at the feet of the Lord,

Not to let my mind any malice hold           

                        ...                   ...                 ...

In such an ambience of cosy bliss,

Let mundane senses kiss the divine bliss.              (“Divine Bliss” 94)

The poet enjoys solace and peace in his meditation to God when he spells the most powerful mantra,

Om! Om!  Om!

since eternity.

Solace!                                                                   (“OM” 29)

For Chambial, life is the choicest gift and rarest dream bestowed on man for human life and love for humanity at large. He always wishes it to practice “values; human behaviour” (43).      

Chambial’s poetry is multisided and multifaceted as it marks a rich variety of themes. He, as a poet and man, loves nature like the Romantics as it offers solace to him. His contact with nature leaves indelible impressions and attractions, sweet memories and recollections in him. He wants to become one with the beauty of nature to be away from the stresses and strains of reality:

The tree beautiful

One has to care and love

To transcend tensions in peace.         (“Harried Hurry” 63)

 

Moist air, Earth green

rife with music:

drip-drop, drip-drop.

Mellowed June air                      (“Simmering Song” 35)

 

Long to languish

in this bowl of Nature

and merge with it;                          (“Wingless” 30)  

 

Chambial, as a poet,  loves the sights, sounds and scents and other sensuous gifts of nature. He loves to have contact with nature for its beauty: charms, scent and music for his gaiety.

Let’s live by being closer

To descry

The beauties of nature

In upright stature            (“Plunder the Thunder” 142)

 

The sweetest moment of life:

The star spangled sky. (“Sands of Oblivion” 97)            

Sweet songs

stir the chords

of heart and mind.        (“Wingless” 30)

 

The lovely music that soars with the waves:

Sinks to bed, rises to the face full in heat;

Lilts the loving hearts with the airy beat,

With the symphony of its lovely staves. (“The Symphony” 96)

 

I went up the hill: the hillside

green, decked with multi-hued flowers

entice birds and butterflies all—

a gala of blush and sweet smell.                    (“Tales to Tell” 48)

 

 

For Chambial, nature is the gift offered by God to Man, His supreme creation, for his bliss. It is the heaven-like Eden for Adam and Eve for their paradise. It, therefore, plays the benevolent role for them. The poet gets engrossed in the beauty of nature to swim in the river of bliss:

Look at

the green, smiling

leaf of a tree

                      ...      ...      ...

I wept in happiness,

For His bounty:                (“His Munificence” 136)

 

Looked deep

into the placid water

of noiselessly

flowing river.                                              (“On the Bank” 137)

 

A sweet and beautiful birdie

Hit by the flowery arrows.                                   (“The Bliss” 22)

 

The colours,

tint the Earth, Sky, Sea.                 (“Beauties of This World” 31)

 

 

Chambial loves nature and the annual seasons. His descriptions of the seasons: summer, “the burning sun” in waiting for “Rain’s mirth”; rains to “mollify” the earth; autumn, “solemn in enchantment”; winter, “shivering chill”, spring, “honeyed breath”; are vivid and picturesque. He adores and celebrates spring in his heart:

Spring mellowed with honeyed-breath stirs life:

A celebration of colours all around;

Prickly chill left far behind in life’s strife

To welcome the soft smooth breath that surrounds.     (“The Sun Singes” 53)        

            

In nature descriptions, Chambial refers to numerous objects of nature: sun, moon, light, birds, trees, rivers, oceans, hills, flowers, showers, stars, myna, cuckoos, seasons and so on like Wordsworth.

Chambial is a keen observer but not a silent spectator of the contemporary society. In his observation, he finds it full of evils. He has memorable experiences got in his keen observation of society. He expects man to have social virtues and human values but he does not find any as per his wish. He shares all his feelings with the readers, so that, they feel them like him. The poet and man in him feels profoundly sorry for the evils:    

Heart is heavy

to recount and remember

the lapses made

undeserved and uncalled for.                               (“Remorse” 41)

 

Man has meddled not with morals only,

Dug deep into the bowls of Earth as well;

Has made vulnerable Earth, life, a hell,

In his blind quest for Mammon selfishly.       (“Man for Mammon” 45)         

 

A poet, without responding to social evils and ills, trivialities and frivolities, injustices and irregularities, inequalities and immoralities, vices and prejudices, etc, is not a poet in true sense. Chambial is a poet whose heart aches for all social evils. He, as a poet of social consciousness and moral awareness, responds to all those failings and reacts vehemently protesting against all those in the welfare of the society, he lives in.

The poet finds his land without ethics, values and virtues in the poem, “We Are Living”. Instead, he finds in the land debauchery, larceny, treachery” as “the order of the day” against his wish to find “love and compassion”. He hates the plight in the land,

We’are living in a land

that abounds in

wolves, hyenas and jackals;                                       (51)                       

 

 

In the contemporary society, man has grown over-selfish to have material matters. In the poem, “Man Prefers Matter”, he opines, “Men prefer matter” in “changed values”. The man today wants to become rich overnight “By fair or foul means” (43) without minding any loss and deception to any fellowman as he feels that money is the source for all his pleasures and luxuries. It is the means, for him, to solve all problems to reach his goal.

Money is the sole subject

and for that

they cast lots to decide

who wins this time.            (“Woman in Kitty” 39)

 

The riches sought in this lusty world,

Overnight one longs to pluck the brightest star;  

(“This Lascivious World” 44)

 

In fact, God created man with His message to him to have human concern and cordial relation for man, man-for-man, man’s amelioration but he goes against the Divine will by craving for material possessions and deceitful earnings.

By fair or foul means, one wants to be rich

In no time. One seeks all troves of Solomon,

Connives for this even with demon.        (“Man Prefers Matter” 43)

 

Apart from foul ways of acquiring money, the poet criticises man’s longing for power in the poem, “The Canyons of Time”: “Ever hungry for power, can stoop to any depth” (133). He detests all prejudices in “Heaven on this Earth” calling all the evils “The devils of / Ego, desire, greed” (81).

Man has transformed the paradise-like earth into a hell against the aims and objectives of an ideal society. He cannot replace the hell-like with the paradise-like on earth. Man lost the paradise due to his failings. He has to regain it by means of his virtues and values. It is not possible for him to re-establish values and virtues, as he has turned heartless: “Love is lost in human heart,” (“There Was a Man” 67).

Chambial loves to live and write for man’s enlightenment, for quest of bliss in life. He wishes the world to be peaceful and the people should enjoy peace as in paradise, doing good for the humanity:

The world is too good a place

Where all of us—the human beings

Should live as His happy and sanguine souls

Removing the thorns on the ways,

Make them play with rivers of their tears.

 

Let’s join hands in a chain

In the world to scatter the pollen of chagrin

And usher for all into a new Heaven of happiness.

(“Heaven of Happiness” 132)

Chambial feels that life is a boon bestowed on man to live and enjoy. It is heavenly: the earth is a heaven for man,

The life has been very kind to us,

Measured world to grow without fuss.

God’s been so kind to grant this far last.

Let’s save with sense: to our lot cast.      (“Live with Winning Thunder 59)  

 

 

Like a patriot, Chambial feels that our country is indisputably great as he has love for his nation. Here the poet’s tone is satirical. He never wishes the people of his nation to be violent. Hence, he never wishes the end of life due to violence or killing on the borders in a battle. His patriotic fervor is apparent when he, with all regrets, refers to the killing of soldiers on the borders. He hates violence in the form of murders, rapes and other brutal acts:  

Men are killed on the borders,

Women become widows,

Mother’s laps empty, eyes flooded to tears.

Children without canopy to face the blizzard.   

(“The Canyons of Time” 133)

The valiant soldiers ever awake on the distant borders:

They are men, who stand for truth and suffer long,       

Picketing against enemies and charlatan hoarders,

They are the men: merit honour, make the land strong.

(“The Wounds of Deceit” 146)

 

Politicians make promises assuring the people of their honest rule for the welfare of the people, especially the peasant community but fail to do so to prove that they are responsible for the decline of values and the downfall of their nation. They prove to be traitors, cheats, villains and so on in the mission of coming up overnight:

They are the real villains who become ignorant too

‘East or west, home is the best’: the true balming hand. 

(“The Wounds of Deceit” 146)

Exploitation, coercion and all other evil practices in the society surpass the limits to result in total devastation. The poet expresses his anguish for the horrendous situation by the use of symbolic images of fire and wind:

The wind turns into gale. The fire—wild fire

when they join hands and move in the valleys,

on the hills and mountains. These dances

devastation. Revolution result             (“Song of Sonority and Hope” 147)

When man has forgotten humanity, the love for his race, the poet feels that the restoration of justice is the only alternative to stop violence and bloodshed:

When exploitation and coercion

cross the bounds of humane humanity,

it becomes must for Nature

to restore the natural justice.    (“Songs of Sonority and Hope” 147)        

     

The poet, as a lover of humanity, touches all aspects of social relations with human concerns especially familial and conjugal relations. Wife and husband are essential for the welfare of a family in the way the wings are essential for a bird, for its safe flight. He refers wife and husband as the two wings essential for life. The family has to develop into a good society to enjoy man’s harmonious existence,

Life isn’t a one-winged bird:

It needs two to fly,

To rise to the sky,

To go past the hills and canyons

To taste the pleasures that lie beyond.      (“Plunder the Thunder” 142)

 

As a humanist, he loves his fellowmen and wishes their welfare. He professes the sense of hope and faith for a welcome change. In the light of optimism, there is new sunrise to shatter the thick pall of darkness and to clear the way to evade ignorance resulting from selfishness and greediness for terrestrial possessions. One finds light to lead all to prove worthy as true human beings:  

There is one light bright

beyond the hill,

in the dark, full of lilt

the perpetual home sans guilt

that all crave to own;

the highest good, life’s crown.  (“’Beyond the Yonder Hill” 49)

 

The Earth, created for Adam’s chastisement,

Can be easily transformed into Heaven

If those living here below the firmament

Follow His commands in this haven.         (“’Our Conduct” 96)

The poet ironically talks about the perfidious actions of men in making existence a hell. Such wicked men are busy in destroying the system that seeks to guarantee them comforts of life:

I marvel at their acumen and sound

Daring who make every effort and sweat

To raze the mansion thoughtlessly to ground

That gives them their life’s comforts as life’s treat.     (“I Marvel” 148)

 

Chambial deals with time and its powers, the past as a history in the form of memories and contemporary society. He sets a model to the poets of younger generation by lashing and criticizing the social evils with hopes of man’s transformation into an ideal one. The poet teaches all ideals and principles for man’s harmonious existence.

Chambial’s poetry establishes him as a poet of high accomplishment in the galaxy of contemporary Indian English poets. His poetry is so profound that the reader has to read between the lines to know the inherent thematic beauty in it. Through his poetic prism, he presents the kaleidoscopic variety of themes. It is thought-provoking and soul-stirring with its thematic affluence and artistic excellence. Through his employment of poetic devices like images, similes, metaphors and personifications in Songs of Sonority and Hope, he presents the snapshot details of all the poetic scenes to the readers. The title is so appropriate that we, as readers, enjoy in the bunch of poems the sonority of rhythmic beauty and the poetic vision to reflect his hope in promoting values in the man of the contemporary socio-political scenario.  

Works Cited

Chambial, D.C.  Songs of Sonority and Hope. New Delhi: Authors Press, 2018.

Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New Delhi: OUP, 1971.

Meyerhoff, Hans.  Time in Literature. London: California Press, 1974.

Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems. London: The Marvel Press:  1988.                   .

----. The Less Deceived. Yarkshire: Marvel Press, 1955.

Keats, John. “Four Seasons.” Poetical Works, edited by H.W. Garrod. Oxford Paperbacks. London: OUP, 1973.

Chowhan, Subhadrakumanri. “Mera Naya Bachpan”. https://kavyaalaya.org/mera_naya_bachpan.jpg