Those Bricks and Walls of Bishop's Monument

Now can you see the monument? It is of wood
built somewhat like a box. No. Built
like several boxes in descending sizes
one above the other.
Each is turned half-way round so that
its corners point toward the sides
of the one below and the angles alternate.
Then on the topmost cube is set 
a sort of fleur-de-lys of weathered wood,
long petals of board, pierced with odd holes,
four-sided, stiff, ecclesiastical.
From it four thin, warped poles spring out,
(slanted like fishing-poles or flag-poles)
and from them jig-saw work hangs down,
four lines of vaguely whittled ornament
over the edges of the boxes
to the ground.
The monument is one-third set against
a sea; two-thirds against a sky.
The view is geared
(that is, the view's perspective)
so low there is no "far away,"
and we are far away within the view.
A sea of narrow, horizontal boards 
lies out behind our lonely monument,
its long grains alternating right and left
like floor-boards--spotted, swarming-still,
and motionless. A sky runs parallel,
and it is palings, coarser than the sea's:
splintery sunlight and long-fibred clouds.
"Why does the strange sea make no sound?
Is it because we're far away?
Where are we? Are we in Asia Minor, 
or in Mongolia?"
An ancient promontory,
an ancient principality whose artist-prince
might have wanted to build a monument
to mark a tomb or boundary, or make
a melancholy or romantic scene of it...
"But that queer sea looks made of wood,
half-shining, like a driftwood, sea.
And the sky looks wooden, grained with cloud.
It's like a stage-set; it is all so flat!
Those clouds are full of glistening splinters!
What is that?"
It is the monument.

     -'The Monument' 

by- 'Elizabeth Bishop'

Being so fond of historical monuments, I at times wonder – is it the fixed and dead that I like the most? Or it it history – shades of ‘good old days’ that fascinate me the most? Do I have a problem with fluidity that I seek that eternity? Or is it just the fact that I love some ancient culture and it’s creativity. And do others also transcend to those times like I do whenever I am inside those walls of a monument? Or it just me who gets that ethnic scent.

And there I landed up with Bishop’d beautiful poem. It rhymed up the process of construction of those monuments in an imaginary hymn. Was she present there during the formation of such a structure. Or is it all her imaginary architecture?
Elizabeth Bishop – a poet known for less words but more of her background work. Her visual tones, her honest smirk – all talk about but one thing in common – those changes of time – and how one’s mind spuns.

While giving birth to this poem, like always, she had her model and a sketch. a crisped blue paper on table, with a rough sketch in her notebook to match. The paper symbolized sea and crisps were it waves on flee.There she talked about the way a monument is given shape. Ironically, her building has no fixed shape. It is made up of wood to one’s surprise. It has no limited hood, is it wise. So a monument is not one fixed time. It grows and gets re-chiselled every time.

It’s a product of wood – open to all time’s altering. Many try to see it, with all its faltering. Like a moon which seems different from different positions. It is also this object which undergoes revealing fissions. Distance plays a vital part. A closer view varies from that of the far away start. So the structure includes misplaced blocks in a random descending order. It has no fixed dimensions, except that sea and sky in spur.

Both sea and sky represent waves and turmoil. They show the doings of time. Like those clouds that keep changing their formation. It seems her monument changes its shapes and its interpretations. She tends to focus upon a vital point. The monument has no one history, no single joint. It’s all about a moment and one’s views - As many observers, as many hues.

 The wood has its own holes and faults. Those are spectators’ jolts. How come there are no marble and all its adornments? Why of all she chose wood and its atornments. Wood I guess is the symbol of ordinary - Which presents art and its history. So a piece of art is not something unusual from start. It rather emerges out of everyday life. The added notions provide it auras of joys and strife.

May it be a poem, a painting, a sculpture or a monument - Each remains eternal and changes with time’s sand. Closer you observe more you can come close to its reality. However, the essential self remains hidden under those masks of artificiality. It is all always the beginning of an artistic process. It is either some agreed with interpretation or a struggle with a huge mess. That quest for the truth of that monument. Alas, it s made up of wood like a temporary tent. It keeps on changing its shape and shades. Even that sea and sky has fewer shapes.

The sea represents the reality of time. Alas, it could not be understood – the waves’ rhyme. Is it because we always remain too far from reality that we can’t understand that sea? Is it because of our numerous interpretations and that urge to clear artificiality? Our possible understandings take the shape of fixed wooden blocks – with which we try to estimate that monument – within several no. of blocks.

Alas, it is impossible to get to the soul of art. It is after all – always on start. It remains something – to be altered with time and spectator’s distance from object. Take it or leave it – its for each of us – to accept. So call it a painting or call it a piece of literature – its always some broken hazy image – a jig–saw puzzle coming under some possible caricature.

WRITTEN  BY - MYSTICAL WANDERER