Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher

Just as Shakespeare puts 'the lunatic, the lover and the poet' at the same level, our very own Nissim Ezekeil puts the poet, the lover and the birdwatcher at the same level in this lovely poem.

Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher

To force peace and never be still

Is not the way of those who study birds
Or women. The best poets wait for words.
The hunt is not an exercise of will
         But patient love relaxing on a hill
To note the movement of a timid wing;
Until the one who knows that she is loved
No longer waits but risks surrendering-
In this the poet finds his moral proved,
      Who never spoke before his spirit moved?
The slow movement seems, somehow, to say much
        more

To watch rarer birds you have to go

Along deserted lanes and where rivers flow
In silence near the source, or by a shore
      Remote and thorny like the hearts dark floor
And there the women slowly turn around,
Not only flesh and bone but myths of light
With darkness at the core, and sense is found
By poets lost in crooked, restless flight,
      The deaf can hear, the blind recover sight

 

--Nissim Ezekiel, The exact name, 1965