FANCY

Clouds -

look like men

who heavy amphorae carry,

look like women

who bathe in a blue river,

look like children,

who white gulls chase.

A blink.

And the amphorae are gone,

there aren't the men,

the river is gone,

there aren't the women,

the birds are gone,

there aren't the children.

Life was almost past.

The blue sky - whitened.

REVIEW *

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."

-Albert Einstein

The poet under study is a perfect artist and her poem begins with her Fancy on the conception of clouds.

"Clouds -

look like men

who heavy amphorae carry,

look like women

who bathe in a blue river,

look like children,

who white gulls chase."

To the poet, all the clouds upon the vast expanse of the universe seem to be like the moving men carrying the massive amphorae. Here the poet likens the clouds to the men who are taxed too much of burden in life and so they feel too exhausted to carry out the tasks entrusted in their hands. The clouds are in clusters and sometimes they appear to the poet as if they are like human beings who are incapacitated to carry out the errands they are destined to perform.

“This world is but a canvas to our imagination.” --Henry David Thoreau.

And how great the winning poet is to think them in terms of human beings feeling heavy and at a loss to do what is expected of them at the right moment !

Like Shelley, the poetess looks upon the changes taking place in them when the breeze slowly blows upon the sky. Here the poetess refers to the amphora, an ancient vessel like form used as a storage jar and one of the principal vessel shapes in Greek pottery, a two-handled pot with a neck narrower than the body. Wide-mouthed, painted amphorae were used as decanters and were given as prizes. Amphora, a storage jar was in great use in ancient Greece.

Body, narrow cylindrical neck, and two handles that rise almost to the level of the mouth broadly : such a jar or vase was used elsewhere in the ancient world. It is also like a double handled vessel shaped container like an urn .

By using the reference, the poetess wants all to think of the intricacies involved in life. Again, she is in a world of imagination to think as if they are like women who are exhilarated to bathe in the blue waters with joy. Now the comparison of the clouds seems to switch over to women, being desirous to bathe in the blue waters of the river. Then after a while, the poetess feels as if the clouds seem to take the shape of the little children who will be delighted to go in pursuit of the white gulls to have their hearts fill. See within a minute her fertile imagination which is making her feel of the clouds as if like men tired with the long journey of life with too much of Commitments, leads her to think of them like ladies fondly bathing in the rivers, finally driving her to see them as if appearing to be like kids, in chase of white gulls.

Like a Romantic poet , in the spreading of the clouds, the poetess finds human kind in general.

A turn comes in the form of a Blink

"And the amphorae are gone,

there aren't the men,

the river is gone,

there aren't the women,

the birds are gone,

there aren't the children."

The poet refers to the amphorae. She feels sorry to see all the changes taking place in the lives of all men, women and kids too. What appears to be amphorae are not there and the languid men are not there either.

Likewise, all the females are not there bathing in the rivers nor all the kids are seen playing with birds. Life is found to be as ephemeral as the moving clouds on the sky. Nothing is permanent in the world . All things once created will be destroyed next time. That is the unseen law of the universe created by the Almighty.

Really one feels happy to find what is uppermost in the mind of the winning poet.

The concluding lines strike a note on all.

"Life was almost past.

The blue sky - whitened. "

In fact ,life is found to be transitory and the only thing that will last long and forever is nothing but the gaiety blue hue of the Cosmo's, seen by our human eyes as the Sky.

May her pen bring forth such verse of outstanding ideals to the joy of the readers.

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*Reviewed by Pushpalatha Ramakrishnan