The World For You Poem by Ananta Madhavan

We inherit a world we did not fashion.
Rainer Maria Rilke called it “an interpreted world”,
Where we do not feel very much at home.
Our fellow-creatures seem to notice it.

Is this because all that we see and feel and know
Have names and labels already in our parlance?
Animals can look around them and see afresh
What is for us too stale and staid to see anew.

We humans named all we saw and fancied,
We coined words and phrases, idioms, language;
We dealt out proverbs, clichés, figures of speech,
And crammed philosophy with abstract nouns.

A French poet, Baudelaire, fancied Nature as a temple
With living pillars which sometimes resound
In a plethora of confused words. “Man wends his way
Through forests of symbols” which coolly gaze at him.

We learn while growing up, the wondrous gift
Of linking fantasies and symbols. I too
Have tried to interpret my world and life
In what I share with one like you, dear reader.