When Autumn Came
This is the way that autumn came to the trees:
it stripped them down to the skin,
left their ebony bodies naked.
It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves,
scattered them over the ground.
Anyone could trample them out of shape
undisturbed by a single moan of protest.
The birds that herald dreams
were exiled from their song,
each voice torn out of its throat.
They dropped into the dust
even before the hunter strung his bow.
Oh, God of May have mercy.
Bless these withered bodies
with the passion of your resurrection;
make their dead veins flow with blood again.
Give some tree the gift of green again.
Let one bird sing.
—Faiz Ahmed Faiz
I have loved this poem for so long. I forget where I first ran across it, but I rediscovered it on www.poets.org. What I love so much about the poem is the passion and the imagery. For a while now, I have tried to view literature, particularly poetry, as if it were being filmed. I would love to film this poem. The way the poem moves from one shot to the next, with the image of the tree to the naked branch, to the leaves, to the birds, and on and on. There’s musicality in the way the poem flows and there are so many possibilities for how this poem could be filmed.
Those first three lines have always stuck with me because it is so intimate. In my own writing, I am working on becoming more intimate in each poem. By intimate I mean, close, personal. I’m writing a lot of poems that deal with landscape and this is a good model for how to approach that. But even with the poems I’m writing (or even in fiction) that deal with characters, this is a good model. I don’t have to show or know a character’s life story. But I can focus on one small thing, or maybe a few small things, and use those to illustrate one aspect of the character. In terms of film, it’s a matter of how close you zoom in and what you focus on.
Okay, I’ve got to go write now.
-S
