A poem composed in English explicated

The Poem beginning with

I saw a humming bird ignite a star once

Written by  Jami Proctor Xu

Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

The text

I saw hummingbird ignite a star once

          red

she flew from the blackness

      and when her beak pierced the tiny red dot

         it  exploded

            a spray

a scatter

              light ray tremors

     into a glow

The poem  opens  with the phrase   I saw. This is in the first person and hence believe it or not  it is  authentic. And of course since the poem opens with—I saw --one expects yisual imagery to follow. The poet saw a humming bird.  A humming bird is very very tiny say three  inches from beak to tail. It comes from nowhere as it were. And  it moves very fast say  at 35 kilometres per hour.How could the poet then espy the humming bird? It is just  a tiny bit rushing through the air. We guess the poet detected the humming  bird with her ears The humming birds wings flap fifty times a minute and there is the sound with the aid of which one recognizes the humming bird. The humming bird is thus an imagery of the eye as well as of the ear.A humming bird iridescent. Thus  there is ambiguity  in its look.The humming bird can fly in many ways and it can fly past the seas. It is a territorial bird and it is very daring. But at the same time  when it faces food shortage it can go into hibernation Thus the humming bird  is  spiritual withal. And when the poet tells us that she saw a humming bird ignite a star there is willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the readers. Because the humming bird is daring and because it can excelsior in the skies very fast . Well, but could there be stars that do not emit light. Yes there could be stars emitting  infra red which is not recognized by the eye. Or there could be black holes—stars with  huge mass  pulling the light into ithemselves and not visible to the eye. The poet saw a humming bird ignite a star once , that is, on one occasion. The readers must not expect it to happen again. So the poem seems to begin on the note of a fairy tale which begins with Once upon a time……. The readers are compelled to be tongue tied. Because they never heard of any happening  the like of it. But the next line is the one word –

red. Now  the word red could mean that the star was once red  emitting infra red. The third line reads –she flew from  darkness. Well it  creates ambiguity.  Just as the star could be once red , so the  bird might have been red. We could legitimately read—red she flew from darkness.Anything red could look big. So may be the star looked big or may be the humming bird  looked bigger than what it was when it flew from the darkness. What   blackness does the poet mean? The poet seems to think in terms of colour and not in terms of light. Besides  only 12 percent of the people on earth are white. It is they who rule the world.But the humming bird sprang from blackness. The humming bird may have appeared from the womb of the exploited. Or may be blackness implies primordial darkness whence  there was light at Gods biddings. In that context the humming bird could be read as the  word---Let there be light.

And the poet tells us that the bird pierced the tiny red dot with the beak. Any  sharp thing whatever could be likened to male. Any  thing that could be pierced could be likened to female. Thus the humming bird which has been described as- she- is perhaps androgynous sometimes. And lo ! the tiny red dot explodrd. Big Bang?Once a dot explodes into a multiverse one is amazed to imagine how infinite density could  remain hidden  there in the dot before the explosion. Presently  after, there was a spray, a scatter With the poet whatever we find in the world is light and made of light. She has the third eye with which she can espy the astral heart of things. She sees the light  to tremor. In other words she perceives  the flux of existence where nothing is permanent. But the poet tells us that the light ray tremors into a glow. Well if there is a glow every dispersed light or thing is welded into a hazy brightness. That is the appearance.The poem is thus the poem of the eye. And of course the lay out of the poem suggests the humming bird excelsioring in the skies. One could fancy the first line to be the sky  where the bird loses its self The bird  begins its flight  from below where – into a glow –is inscribed. Or may be the first line could be flat ground whence the bird flies higher and higher still till it is hardly seen. Be that as it may here is a new creation myth