bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

SCMP Reporter

Today's show is about a poem written from a child's point of view by Indian poet Nissim Ezekiel.

  To listen to Poetry On The Air, tune in to RTHK Radio 4 at 10.05 am today and again at 6.30 pm tomorrow.

  Ezekiel's poem, Night of the Scorpion, tells the story of the poet's mother being stung by one of the dangerous creatures.

 Scorpions are small and black and live under stones. They have two claws and a very poisonous tail.

  A scorpion sting can kill babies, while an adult will at the very least experience agonising pain.

  From the title, Night of the Scorpion, do you think the poem is going to be:   A happy poem? A poem about danger? A poem that tells a story? Or a poem for children?   Here are the opening lines:   I remember the night my mother   was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours of  steady rain had driven him   to crawl beneath a sack of rice   We immediately can guess that it's going to be a poem which tells a story. The opening prepares us for a plot-line.

  Why was she stung? Was she in a lot of pain? How did she deal with it? What medicine did she take?   This is an example of autobiographical poetry - created from real memories of real events that actually happened to the poet.

 Memories are a good resource for a poet, especially if the memory is unusual or dramatic.

  Nissim Ezekiel was born in 1924 in Bombay, though the poem is set in rural India.

  It tells of how a scorpion crawled into a house to escape the rain. The house was dark because there was no electricity.

  The mother was unlucky enough not to see the scorpion and it stung her toe. Villagers came and tried to ease her pain with magical, ritual and comforting words.

  They saw the scorpion sting not as a natural phenomenon but as the work of the devil.

  The peasants came like swarms of flies   and buzzed the name of God a hundred times   to paralyse the evil one    Her husband even tried to burn the sting away by setting fire to her toe!   My father, sceptics, rationalist,   trying every curse and blessing,   powder, mixture, herb and hybrid   He even poured a little paraffin   upon the bitten toe and put a match to it   I watched the flame feeding on my mother   The mother was in agony for 20 hours. When she recovered, all she could say was:   Thank God the scorpion picked on me   and spared my children   Despite the title, the poem has more to do with a mother's unselfish love than a scorpion. The creature is used as a vehicle for showing the selflessness of the mother who puts her children first.

  The poem suggests that superstition in India back then was strong; chants and remedies were often used instead of medicine. It also reveals a belief in reincarnation:   May the sins of your previous birth   be burned away tonight, they said  May the suffering decrease   the misfortunes of your next birth, they said   In the cycle of rebirth in which good people are reborn to a higher lifestyle and bad ones are reborn to a lower lifestyle, the scorpion would be seen as a low life-form and in some way represents evil.

  The poem is written from the persona of a child - but is it written for children? The poem does use some advanced vocabulary so it clearly was not written as children's verse, although children can enjoy it.

  For example, look at the section dealing with the father's response - 'sceptics' and 'rationalist' are difficult words not usually used in poetry for children.

  The poem is written as though to be spoken. Notice how sentences run from one line to another.

  This easy flow of natural speech is interspersed with the chants of the villagers to give the poem vigour and immediacy.

This is an edited version of the programme 



Adult sting in a child's tale