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Friday, March 09, 2007

Fafaia, by Rupert Brooke

I have loved this poem since I was a boy. Reading it might perhaps help all my interlocutors here and at my orkut site/community to realise a little better the haunting loneliness that I keep trying to soothe - as all men and women would try, once they acknowledged it and came to terms with it, instead of forever trying to hide or run away from it - by befriending as many fellow human beings I can before my little time on this earth is over (and what does it matter whether that happens tonight or forty years hence: it will be all too soon anyway!)


Stars that seem so close and bright,

Watched by lovers through the night,

Swim in emptiness, men say,

Many a mile and year away.


And yonder star that burns so white,

May have died to dust and night,

Ten, or maybe, fifteen year,

Before it shines upon my dear.


Oh! often among men below,

Heart cries out to heart, I know,

And one is dust a many years,

Child, before the other hears.


Heart from heart is all as far,

Fafaia, as star from star.


Rupert Brooke, Saanapu, November 1913

14 comments:

Unknown said...

sir what's the meanin' of Fafaia? i might be able to appreciate this poem if i knew the meanin' of this word.

Suvro Chatterjee said...

So far as I have been able to find out, the poet was telling a story to a little tribal boy somewhere on a remote south Pacific island. Fafaia was the boy's name.

Arnab Kar said...

The poem is really good. It makes me think about a point that people from various parts on world may be looking at the same star but they may not know each other and also the fact that they are doing the same thing. But both of them are appreciating their beauty to the same extent. It is as if to say that in real sense that various people ponder over the same issues but use various paths to reach the same goal. But it so happens that on the way to the goal itself they have different views on what they are seeing on the roadside and start quarreling with each other they that the other is wrong. Then they deviate from the goal.
The star above them all laughs at the their silly moves.

I know not whether what all i spoke was off the topic or not. I felt like saying what came to my mind.

akaash said...

of stars, of stories..

of lost passions, ..of desires..

of wishes..

of trust...


tell me sir, ..what does the word "longing" signify?

Saikat Chakraborty said...

Dear Sir,

The name ‘Fafaia’ sound so mystical, yet it feels that one also knows him.

It fills me with awe that a star probably breathed its last when you wrote this post and I am probably looking at that star tonight. Not to mention that the poem was written a century ago. Definitely not all ‘good is oft interred with their bones’.

Thanks for sharing this poem.

With regards,
Saikat.

Suvro Chatterjee said...

Good to see you are visiting old posts, Saikat. As I have said before, nothing on this blog gets dated.

Yes, it's a nice thought. Notice that the last comment came in eight years ago, from an old boy considerably senior to you, and you had just stepped into college then! Doesn't time fly?

This is indeed a haunting poem. One of the few I can still quote wholly from memory. 'The proof of a great poem is not that you have never forgotten it, but that you knew at first sight that you never could forget it'.

And many thanks for the line from Julius Caesar. You can hardly know how it warms an old teacher's heart: that not everything is wiped out from the mind as soon as another examination is done. It has been well said that education is what remains when everything you have been taught is forgotten.

Best wishes, and keep commenting.

Sir

Saikat Chakraborty said...

Dear Sir,

I found the poem named 'Canoe' by Keith Douglas in this blog-
https://ourartfulcosmos.com/nature/

Keith Douglas was a poet who lost his life during the Second World War. You wrote about Rupert Brooke in one of your posts-....and then went to war and got himself killed. Lucky boy. Not all of us have the same good fortune to go early, and leave behind only our works for people to admire and sigh over, and perchance to think “I wish I had known him”...

Keith Douglas's life was not too different from Rupert Brooke. You might have read his works but I thought I will share this finding with you.

Take care Sir.

With regards,
Saikat.

Suvro Chatterjee said...

Thanks for commenting, Saikat, and the link to the poem.

I find it strangely interesting that you keep coming back to this particular post after every few years. Obviously it touched something deep and permanent in you, while leaving so many other readers untouched! That, I think, is one of the greatest mysteries about us: "heart from heart is quite as far... as star from star'!

Saikat Chakraborty said...

Dear Sir,

As you had written earlier- 'The proof of a great poem is not that you have never forgotten it, but that you knew at first sight that you never could forget it'.

I am gad that you are there and you started this blog, thus letting us access these gems forever.

Sincerely,
Saikat.

Unknown said...

Dear Mr. Chatterjee, Hello from the North of England! (Just north of Liverpool) I've been enjoying your thoughtful, interesting posts very much. I discovered your blog because I was searching for the quote 'The proof of a great poem ...' and I was delighted to find it quoted here. Now I'm wondering -- who do YOU think said it originally? It's a quote that I remember well (and use ALL the time!), and I know where I think I first saw it -- in an essay by Robert Frost? -- but apart from your blog, I can't find any reference to it, anywhere. Just intrigued whether your memory agrees with mine!! Stay well! With all my best wishes, Maura Heaphy Dutton, Lancashire UK

Suvro Chatterjee said...

Dear Ms. Dutton,

So nice of you to comment, and your very kind words.

I have always thought that that quotation was from Robert Frost, so now I am puzzled and a little embarrassed to think that I might have been wrong all along. But the words themselves ring true, don't they, whoever might have said them first?

Unknown said...

No, please don't be embarrassed!!! I agree with you, I'm sure I read it, once, a long time ago, in an essay by Robert Frost. Possibly a introduction to a volume of poetry he edited? Amusingly, I read the line, and it resonated so much, I have never forgotten it!! I was delighted to see it in your blog -- there are two of us out there who remember it and quote it and -- as you say -- it hardly matters who said it first.

Saikat Chakraborty said...

Dear Sir,

I read and think about this poem, consciously and subconsciously, almost every day. While commenting on your English Day post, I decided to return to this post yet again.

What a gem you have shared, and I am grateful that you have such a wide range of interests that bemuse you, and I stand to benefit from it forever.

Though unrelated to this poem, I recently read one by Wendell Berry (from the 'Leavings' poem collection) that I thought I would share-

"Yes, though hope is our duty,
let us live a while without it
to show ourselves we can.
Let us see that, without hope,
we still are well. Let hopelessness
shrink us to our proper size.
Without it we are half as large
as yesterday, and the world
is twice as large. My small
place grows immense as I walk
upon it without hope.
Our springtime rue anemones
as I walk among them, hoping
not even to live, are beautiful
as Eden, and I their kinsman
am immortal in their moment.

Out of charity let us pray
for the great ones of politics
and war, the intellectuals,
scientists, and advisors,
the golden industrialists,
the CEOs, that they too
may wake to a day without hope
that in their smallness they
may know the greatness of Earth
and Heaven by which they so far
live, that they may see
themselves in their enemies,
and from their great wants fallen
know the small immortal
joys of beasts and birds."

Suvro Chatterjee said...

I can only fervently say Amen that some men may learn from the great wants fallen the small immortal joys of beasts and birds... or rather, the joys of truly great souls who have toiled all their lives to become simple again. Thank you, Saikat. I have in mind the likes of Milarepa, and St. Francis of Assisi, Sri Ramkrishna, and the sort of man Tagore tried all his life to become.