At What Dark Point by Anne Ranasinghe
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.