A Poem composed by Jami Proctor Xu explicated

A Poem Composed By Jami Proctor Xu

Explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

Text

Willow

Liu

Two orioles call from the green willow

Two boys cross a river   returning home

A boy slips yellow feather waves beat against weeping branches

Beneath a flurry of orioles

One boy reaches the other shore

Liangge huangli ming cullia

Liu

A line of egrets ascends the blue sky

Aline of words enters into the rivers flow

In green waters a friend searches for a friend

From his mothers window the snow of a thousand autumns

Accumulates on the west peak

Why this need for a body to burn to bury to burn

Liu       flow   liu

Linage huangli ming cuiliu

A line splits in seven directions

A letter a character collides against the stones grey surface

All he finds is his friends face

He carries it in his hands    all he has

 to hand to a mother

the snow of a thousand autumns on the west peak

anchored in the doorway a boat from three thousand miles east

liu to remain to retain to stay

liu to keep

two orioles call from the willow

Explication

The poem opens with the call of birds. Two orioles  call. The orioles are the harbingers of sunshine and summer.The  oriole is associated with the arch angel Auriel who oversees the activities of the nature spirits on earth. The oriole opens up the window through which one could espy the spirits inhabiting nature. The oriole revives the child in man and revives the joy of life. Fairies live in the neighbourhood of orioles . Two orioles may again mean two happinesses The orioles call from the green willow.The willow stands for the moon and psychic powers. It lives near water. It also stands for deserted women . The night Desdemona was murdered she sang a song about a willow . Deserted Ophelia falls from a willow and is drowned. So the call of angels from a willow might give us a preview of  wisdom and joy of life achieved through sorrow.The willow is associated with river. The river could stand for the transitoriness   of the contingent world. Two boys cross the river  returning home while two orioles call from a green willow. One wonders whether the home is situated on the other side of the  transitory world. May be the two boys cross the river to return home at the call of the two orioles.A boy slips. Yellow feather waves beat against weeping branches.So there are weeping willow trees that are associated with tragic deaths. But how could we explain yellow feather waves? The oriole is a bird with yellow or orange plumage .Is the boy who slips  a metaphor for a male oriole  which has yellow plumage of the two orioles in the willow? Or else the sight of the boy slipping stir the orioles whose yellow plumes are reflected on the waves. One boy however reaches the other shore. Does he really cross the world of transitoriness? Liu willow liu.The Chinese word liu could mean many things.But liu is pronounced as leo. And hence liu willow liu could be recited as leo willow leo.So there is an exclamation Oh at the sight of the boy drowned and another boy reaching the other side of the river. Liangge huangli ming cuiliu—two yellow orioles crow between the green willows. A line of silver herons with white plumes ascend the sky. A line of words enters the rivers flow. In green waters a friend searches for a friend. The willows are reflected on the water and hence the water is green. And it is the orioles who observe the happening. While the friend who has crossed the river searches the friend who is drowned one of the orioles see the herons ascending or a path ascending. The word for heron in Chinese lu sounds like the word for path or way.The other oriole finds words entering the flow of the river . In other words the river babbles.Here  words could be the metaphor for the churning of the water by the friend in search of his drowned friend. One who grosses the river of transitoriness seeks to rescue his fellowmen who get drowned in the waters of sorrow. The two birds could be the two selfs in the poet. May be two birds are witnessing the same event. While one interprets the event as crossing of the river another finds the same event as getting drowned in the river. And may be the one interpretation seeks to understand the other. Thus the ambiguity of the world that we perceive is brought home to the readers. While the search continues from his mothers window the snow accumulates on the west peak. Snow stands for death. Accumulated snow might stand for the accumulated archetypes in the collective mind unexplored. Does the story of life and death turn into an archetype in the collective mind? The poet asks what boots it in seeking the dead body.Hasnt the boy who is drowned has got a clean burial a watery burial? the present reader wonders. May be the body is being searched so that it could be buried or burnt. To burn to bury to burn.The earth principle or the water principle or the willow is set between the two ori oles or fire principles The birds or the poet observes a line splitting into seven directions. As soon as Lord Buddha was born he walked seven steps symbolizing seven directions in North South East West  Up Down and Here. The poet in a vision sees how a line splits into the seven directions and space is created and a letter or a character collides against the stones gray surface.In other words language falters or explodes .It is when language fails or beyond s   itself the signified which baffles language or the signifier is realized.All that the friend finds is the face of the drowned body of his friend.In fact it is the face of a man that is most significant.One recognizes by the face.He carries it in his hand all that he has to hand to the mother. And mother is but the accumulated snow or the accumulated experience of existence..Anchored in the doorway of mothers digs is a boat from three thousand miles east—liu liu  t wo orioles cry. East could be  the direction in which the Sun or Eros  rises. And the West could be the direction where Thanatos or the accumulated snow rules.The boat is the transport from Eros to Thanatos. It is anchored in the depth of etenal consciousness. The orioles Eros and Thanatos cry liu liu –keep stay perched in the tree of existence.The poem is thus singularly unique. It is a sequence of symbolic word paintings sucgh as  two birds and a willow tree two boys crossing the river accumulated snow and boat anchored in its neighbourhood.Each symbol is capable of interpretation on many levels and the readers are transported by them from one plane to another. The poem is a triumph of symbolist art where one line is split into seven directions. It opens with two orioles in a willow tree. That is the world in the contingent. The poem transports us to the primordial mother where all consciousness is solidified