THE PEACOCK (Woven Words)

ABOUT THE POET
The Peacock' is a poem by Sujata Bhatt, a diasporic writer who lives in Germany. Her poems depict the unsettling feeling of a person living away from her motherland. The poem is taken from her Brunizem collection that won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Asia section in 1988.

Diaspora refers to people who are living away from their homeland.
Turquoise- a greenish blue colour
Arched- bending down
Dart- to move suddenly and quickly in a particular direction


His loud sharp call
seems to come from nowhere.
Then, a flash of turquoise
in the pipal tree
The slender neck arched away from you as he descends,
and as he darts away, a glimpse
of the very end of his tail.

I was told
that you have to sit in the veranda
And read a book,
preferably one of your favourites
with great concentration..
The moment you begin to live
inside the book
A blue shadow will fall over you.
The wind will change direction,
The steady hum of bees
In the bushes nearby
will stop.

The cat will awaken and stretch.
Something has broken your attention;
And if you look up in time
You might see the peacock turning away as he gathers his tail
To shut those dark glowing eyes,
Violet fringed with golden amber.
It is the tail that has to blink
For eyes that are always open.

1. Comment on the lines that make you visualise the colourful image of the peacock.

The lines that visualise the colourful image of peacock are “a flash of turquoise”, “A blue shadow will fall over you”, “Violet fringed with golden amber”.

2. What are the cues that signal the presence of the peacock in the vicinity?

The setting of the poem is a pipal tree where the poet in her childhood is sitting a reading a book when she listens to a sudden call of a bird and suddenly there is a flash of turquoise , and a shadow of blue falling on her cues the presence of the peacock in the vicinity.

3. Does the connection drawn between the tail and the eyes add to the descriptive detail of the poem? How does the poem capture the elusive nature of the peacock?

“he gathers his tail To shut those dark glowing eyes
To shut those dark glowing eyes, Violet fringed with golden amber.
It is the tail that has to blink For eyes that are always open.”

The poet say that, when the poet turned herself to look at the peacock the peacock gathered his tail and eluded her attention by his colourful tail, the peacock diverts the attention of the viewers by its tail but the peacock has a dark glowing eyes that are always open. The peacock is very sharp and never blinks its eyes but its blinks its tail the poet further observes. The poet also says in the middle stanza of the poem that she is been told to concentrate in her book but sitting under a pipal tree she is being eluded by the peacock.

4. The peacock is a colourful bird. How does the poem capture the various colours that its plumage displays?
The poet gives a vivid imagery of the plumage of the peacock and its flamboyance by
Saying “ a flash of turquoise”, and a “a blue shadow”.

5. Why do you think the peacock has been chosen by the poet?
The poet has chosen peacock because the peacock is used an allegory, she uses peacock to refer to India where she spent her childhood and also her great affection to her homeland.