That Wonderous Life Force! Poem by RAJ NANDY

THAT WONDEROUS LIFE FORCE!

The old oak tree stood stripped and naked,
Silhoutted against a bleak winter landscape, -
looking like some zombie!
With its crooked hands and gnarled fingers all
jutting out,
Pointing at heaven as if in silent accusation,
without doubt!
Like old Lear left out in the winter's cold,
Ill-clothed, unfed, both bent and old!
But with the arrival of the season's queen the
glorious Spring,
The birds begin to hover round and sing,
A self-impelling life force surges up from within!
As fresh green leaves begin to sprout once more,
And the nakedness gets covered with a garment
of verdant green!
Perhaps it is ' elan vital ', that self-impelling life
force, *
About which the French philosopher Henri Bergson,
spoke and wrote!
And so it is with us humans, for when an individual
dies,
The race continues to survive through successive
generations,
Through that life force of creative evolution!

- Raj Nandy
New Delhi
11 Sep 08
(Reference is made to Bergson's famous work 'Creative Evolution')