Recently, someone showed me an interesting poem.
It seemed like ages since I last read one and understood it completely. To be exact, it was during my schooling days and when I talk about poem, my old time literature text book comes to my mind.
Poems like ‘Life Brief Candle’ by William Shakespeare, ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost and there’s also another one that I remember - ‘There’s Been A Death, In The Opposite House’ by Emily Dickinson.
I guess it’s really interesting how few short stanzas (that’s what they call paragraphs in poems) can give very deep meanings. And I think it is also based on an individual’s understanding as its interpretation can be different from one to the other.
So... as I was saying earlier, someone showed me a poem lately and asked me to figure it out myself. I tried (not that I didn't at all), I definitely tried and did my own research to understand it. Google was so helpful that I got an interpretation for the poem.
But not too sure why, I wasn't really satisfied with the interpretation. So, I asked the person who introduced me to the poem to give his understanding of it.
And here goes the poem and a brief explanation about it.
The Cage – by Martin Armstrong
Man, afraid to be alive
Shuts his soul in senses five
Human are so afraid to live life that he would rather be dead and shuts himself into the world of senses without knowing he has greater abilities.
From fields of uncreated light
Into the crystal tower of sight,
From the ability to discover this universe where anything can be created, he limits himself to only see using the sense of sight.
And from the roaring songs of space
Into the small flesh carven place
Of the ear whose cave impounds
Only small and broken sounds,
From the ability to hear the sounds of space, he limits himself to only hear small and broken sounds through the ears.
And to his narrow sense of touch
From strength that held the stars in clutch,
Instead of the strength which had held stars, human use the limited ability confined by the sense of touch.
And from the warm ambrosial spice
Of flowers and fruits of paradise,
Into the frail and fitful power
Of scent and tasting sweet and sour;
From the many unique and amazing things to taste and smell, he limits himself using his senses to only taste sweet and sour.
And toiling for a sordid wage
There in his self created cage
Ah, how safely barred is he
From menace of Eternity
And to earn a certain amount of money in a cage human created himself, he assumes he is safer from the outside world, not knowing there is eternity if not bounded by the senses.
P.S. Feel free to comment your understanding of the poem. Let’s not be judgy. ;)
