Stirring, rhythmic words from howling winds

By Alfreda de Silva

Not the best of weathers for inspiration to guide the unpredictable pen, one might say. But weathers, fair and foul have stirred poets to produce music, ranging from the sombre and menacing to the rhythmic and majestic.

Thomas Hardy, well-known for his novels such as Under the Greenwood Tree, Jude the Obscure, the Dynasts and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, wrote poetry which was natural and spontaneous. His poems have the ebb and flow of controlled emotion, when he writes of the elements. In Weathers he sings:

"This is the weather the shepherd shuns 
And so do I,
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
And thresh and ply.
And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe
And meadow rivulets overflow,
.... And rooke in families homeward go
And so do I".

W.B. Yeats born in Dublin boasted the rich heritage and imagery of Ireland, its mysticism and folklore. Beginning with the dreamy, evocative romanticism of his early poetical career he moved on to something more vigorous and earthy.

A turning point in his life was his meeting with Lady Gregory, promoter of Irish literature. Of interest to us is the fact that she was the wife of Sir William Gregory, a former Governor of Ceylon. His statue stands in front of the Colombo museum.

Lady Gregory's patronage and her invitation to him to her country house, Coole Park in Galway, gave Yeats the opportunity to write in elegant and aristocratic surroundings. He saw this lifestyle as a way of bringing order to chaos, a view he expresses in poems like Prayer for My Daughter. It begins with lines depicting a storm:

"Once more the storm is howling and half-hid
Under the cradle-hood and coverlet
My child sleeps on.....
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower 
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream.....

The American poet, Carl Sandburg, held a variety of jobs as reporter, sceneshifter, athlete, dish-washer, copywriter and itinerant guitar player among other things. He writes about a common feature of the aftermath of the sort of rain we've been having for some time now-Frog Songs. They go with what sounds like a quixotic symphony. But in this overture, the singing is all bass and tenor, with a lull for a well-timed soloist to take over now and then. Perhaps Sandburg heard those frogs out there in Illinois, as we hear them in their strange music. Here are Sandburg's words:

"The silver burbles of the frogs wind and swirl,
The lines of their prongs swing up in a spray.
..... The eye sees nothing, the ear is filled, the head remembers
The beat of the swirl of the frog throat silver prongs
In the early springtime when eggs open, when feet learn,
When the crying of the water begins a new year".
The poetry of wind and rain is not only an expression of music. It is also one of a heightened awareness of the environment and its myth and magic of the seasons.

American poet Barbara Howes is the author of several books of poetry, and has had her short stories and poetry published in prestigious magazines. Her translations from the French have appeared in well-known anthologies. She won a Brandeis University Poetry Grant, and spent two years as a Guggenheim Fellow in Italy. There is an underlying menace, a sense of evil in her poem Mistral, the dry wind that blows from the north through the Rhone valley in France. It overpowers her:

"Percussive, furious, this wind
Sweeps down the mountain and
Under the pennon of skirling air
Blows through each red-tiled house as if
Nothing were there....
As I start home a coven
Of winds is let loose at every corner;
Alone in a howling 
Waste, figurehead sculptured in air,
Bent low, deafened, I plunge
On, blind in the eye of the storm."

Howard Nemerov was a Harvard scholar, consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress for 1963-1964 and a widely reorganized authority on American Literature. 

Besides poetry he has written novels, short stories and a variety of essays.

From his artistic perspective and sensitive mind we have this poem A Spell Before Winter. It is about the late fall when the glory of the fiery autumn leaves on the trees have been shed:

"After the red leaf and the gold have gone, 
Brought down by the wind, then by hammering rain
Bruised and discoloured when October's flame
Goes blue to guttering in the cusp, this land
Sinks deeper into silence, darker into shade
There is a knowledge in the look of things....."

Ted Hughes was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1984 till the time of his death in October 1998. Born in Yorkshire, he knew all about weathers in his capricious landscape. He was married to the intense and brilliant American poet, Sylvia Path, when she was on a Fulbright Grant to Newnham College in Cambridge. They were divorced a few years before her suicide, which made tragic history in literary circles. His poem Wind is alive with feeling:

"This house has been far out at sea all night
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills.
Winds stampeding the fields under the window,
Floundering black astride and blinding wet
Till day rose..... we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought, 
Or each other. We watch the fire blazing
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

Fusion of music styles

The eight numbers are a fine mix. 'Prelude in F', for example, has been described as 'a complex and interwoven work inspired by local drumming, folk songs, 'Perahera' and low country chants and 'devol madu' music. In the 'Gajaga', Harsha presents the popular Gajaga Vannama (there are 18 Vannams in Sinhala folk music) with a new twist. 

Local drums like the Geta Bera, Davula, Tammattama, Devol Bera and Bummadiya have been used extensively in Harsha's creations. He hastens to explain that he has taken care to preserve the natural sound of these unique instruments. 

Our rich folk tradition comes out strongly in Harsha's creations. They also demonstrate Harsha's cleverness in identifying what can be used effectively to suit contemporary tastes. He talks about the inspiration he has got from 'Pirith Ose', a style of singing in Sinhala folk music, songs sung during harvesting time, music used during the 'thevava' in temples . The influence of these is clearly seen in most of the compositions. Some he has rearranged while others have been used in the same format.

Something special

Harsha started studying classical piano when he was just six. As a youngster he played with a number of well-known groups and travelled extensively. His big break came when, in 1992, the Colombo Symphony Orchestra performed his work 'Svarasanga Vannama', a work for symphony orchestra, piano and local drums. The composition has been incorporated into a doctoral research project. 

In his current effort, Harsha who plays the piano has been joined by Mahinda Bandara (guitar), Hemapala Gallge (drums) and Guy Halpe (fretlass bass). 

Taste of Sinhala

Sinhala world of colours

By Prof. J.B. Disanayaka

Take the English colour word 'orange'. The English have taken it from the round reddish yellow fruit, which they call 'orange'. But are oranges of the same colour? Of course not. The oranges that the English see are 'orange in colour' but the oranges that the Sinhalese see are not.

On the other hand, the Sinhalese have created colour words from their physical environment. The Sinhala word for 'green' is 'kola' which is the Sinhala word for 'leaves of trees'. Thus the Sinhala term 'kola paata' (green colour) literally means 'the colour of leaves'.

So is the Sinhala word for 'yellow' which is 'kaha' the plant known as turmeric, a plant that grows in abundance in Sri Lanka. Its fine powder is used for giving a special taste and colour to food, both rice and curry.

In fact, there is a special preparation of rice (buth) known as 'kaha buth' which is called 'yellow rice' in Sri Lankan English. The word 'saffron'' is also used to denote this powder and we often talk of a Buddhist monk's saffron robes.

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