BY ALEM HAILU G/KRISTOS
A transition from a bleak to a bright season, specially heralding a new year like that of ours, warrants an overwhelming sense of optimism.
When a New Year draws nigh, our desire to reshape own fate embarking on a new chapter begins to put down roots in our heart. We want to turn our life around in an all-rounded way thoroughly assessing our past for mending wrong turns or making up for skill gaps in one hand and catapulting to much-sought-for achievements or materializing long-cherished dreams on the other hand. We want to have our hands on the wheel of the New Year.
Many decide to bury the hatchets in favor of peace. People wish one another a blissful and productive year. They beseech the almighty to not forsake them in their endeavor for a rosy future. Those who are stuck in beating the drum of war in outmoded fashion must do introspection to mend their disposition divorced from positive thinking.
Let us see this feeling of optimism via the lens of Salomeja Neris’s poem Spring Toast explicated by the author of this piece.
/Spring toast/
Toasting the sun,
See spring twirl
Flower-cups in the air
If I could wipe from your brow,
World,
The furrows of care!
Happiness is said to be the best cosmetic. In this very musical lyric portraying a great economy of words, readers’ attention is drawn to a moment of felicitation the transition from autumn to spring warrants. The former is a public symbol of sadness while the latter happiness. When assailed by anxieties, routine responsibilities of discharging respective duties and also leading a prosaic life, burrows and furrows find their way into the faces of people. Just like the rings on an axe shortened long tree tell on the age of a tree, the burrows and furrows people develop on their faces lay bare the hardships they weathered as well as their aging and drawing closer to their destruction. This notwithstanding, people easily put behind their back the dissatisfaction they harbor when celebrations are called for. They bubble up with satisfactions that defy description. The ensuing of a new season atones for their troubled sprit.
In the poem above, in an indirect way, the persona, via word pictures, conveys the aforementioned underlying thought. The persona shows even nature portrays a reciprocal positive response to the most welcomed season. Personifying the world and spring as well as creating a brilliant metaphor between a flower and a cup the persona proclaims an occasion for felicitation is due.
Here it suffices to see /Toasting the sun, See spring twirl flower cups in the air./ The identification of such a wonderful analogy, between the objects compared, by itself shows how much imagination the poem has demanded to emerge so superb. This picturesque similarity renders the poem savory and vivid.
Personifying the world lending it the power of feeling like harboring resentment and the tragedy of developing furrows on its brow and burrows on its facial elements, the persona imparts on readers the message that the inanimate world like the animate one senses the moment for felicitation resulting from the change of a disagreeable season by the agreeable one.
Observe also spring serves us a cultural symbol of jubilation in the seasonal life cycle. The organ like effect the rhyming of air and care creates also pleases the experienced ear. Though almost all the images on the first stanza, show felicitation is called for the words, toasting, twirl, flower cups are relatively strong.
The thematic tension in this poem is spring, as a balm, in one hand and the travails nature has in store on the other hand. The contrasting imageries and word images furrows and care on one scale and the toasting of the sun, flower cups and spring on the other scale also create tension in imageries. The two tensions in unison buttress the unifying theme, spring is a balm for a worn out soul.
Though this poetic gem is straightforward, its aesthetic quality and terseness as well as suitability for studying by heart makes it unsurpassed. See the word images of sadness have permeated the second stanza wipe, brow, furrows and care. The synchronistic effect of the poetic devices the poet utilized accentuates the underlying theme that the moment is a time for jubilation and toasting for all humans and nature alike.
May Almighty bless the new Ethiopian year/2015/ with peace and bliss!
The Ethiopian Herald September 7/2022
