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At What Dark Point by Anne Ranasinghe

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                                                                    At What Dark Point by Anne Ranasinghe


Anne Ranasinghe(Anneliese Katz) who was a Jewish by birth was born in 1925 in Germany. She was a victim of Nazi violence against Jewish in Germany. In the literary world Anne Ranasinghe is known as a holocaust writer. Here in her poem “At What Dark Point” she brings out the idea of unpredictability of violence in a more evocative manner.

The poem “At What Dark Point” sets in a lush and rich almost romantic background with a regular scenery where a stranger sitting under the Araliya in the poet’s path and twisting the strands of a rope. At once it brings innocence and beauty in life yet the poet juxtaposes the idea with sinister and evil dormant. Suddenly the romantic verdant setting moves into a somber. The mechanical routine of the action has suddenly been transformed, rousing evil without any volition of the doer. This is what the poet experienced with a strong sense of genocide, it was her known world with the people who she had the trust, faith and reliance suddenly metamorphosed into a mind-boggling horrific world of violence and brutality. It is her memory of Holocaust that triggers in her mind. The present scenery evokes her horrific past and inviolate in her consciousness.

“And seeing him sit day after day,

sinister, silence, twisting his rope

to a future purpose of evilness

I sense the charred- wood smell again”

With the innocent action of the man she was potent with a signal of horror come in. It was the Nazi attack where humanity was reduced to beasts and there was no possibility of love and reason. “Animal fear” suggests the fact that hunting for prey. She smells the burning down of the beautiful synagogue and the blood thirst of the hunters. Moreover she depicts the picture with a sound effect “echoing thud” she extends her experience by foregrounding her memory to the human context.

Yet as a whole the poem conveys the deep pessimism of the poet. Neither the technological achievements nor cultural facts can safeguard for the primeval instincts of the humans.

“I know

That anything is possible

anytime. There is no safety….”   She nor more believes in any abstract image of philosophy, music or even no more faith in religion. Her ultimate emphasis is on the cycle of evil which is endemic and moreover where the hunted and hunters are humans.  

      

At What Dark Point by Anne Ranasinghe

Every morning I see him

sitting in speckled shade

of blossom laden araliya tree

which I planted many years ago

in my garden, and it branches now

have spread in our lane.

Under my tree in a shadow of silence

he sit, and with log skeletal hands

sorts of strands from a tangle of juten fibres

and twisting, twisting makes a rope

that grows. And grows. Each day.

Every morning I pass him. He sits

in the golden – haze brightness under

my tree. Sits

on the edge of his silence twisting

his lengthening rope and

watching

me.

And seeing him sit day after day,

sinister, silent, twisting his rope

to a future purpose of evilness

I sense the charred-wood smell again

Stained glass exploding in the flames

( a firework of fractured glass

against the black November sky)

the streets deserted, all doors shut

at twelve o’ clock at night, and running with animal fear

between high houses shuttered tight

the jackboot ringing hard and clear

while stalking with the lust for blood.

I can still hear

the ironed heel – its echoing thud-

and still can taste the cold-winter-taste

of charred-wood-midnight-fear

knowing

that nothing is impossible

that nothing is impossible

that anything is possible

that there is no safety

in words o r houses

that boundaries are theoretical

and love is relative

to the choice before you.

I know that anything is impossible

anytime. There is no safety

in poems or music or even in

Philosophy. No safety

in houses or temples

of any faith.

And no one knows

at what dark point the time will come again

blood and knives, terror and pain

of jackboots ant twisted strand of rope

And the impress of a child’s small hand

paroxysmic mark on an oven wall

scratched death mark on an oven wall

is my child’s hand.

          


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