Gandhiji wrote to the children of his ashram, “Little birds, ordinary birds, cannot fly without wings. With wings, of course, all can fly… See, I have no wings. Yet I come flying to you every day in thoughts”.
True freedom, which the Mahatma recognised and what Tagore celebrated in his poem, is the freedom of thought. Thoughts which are like rivers will instil hope and nurture constructive transformation.
Poet, writer, professor and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou, in her poem titled ‘Caged Bird’, says that a free bird “dares to claim the sky”. Only thoughts which can transcend bars of rage and fear will soar high.
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
He owns the breeze, ‘the sighing trees’ and ‘fat worms’, and he names the sky his own. But a caged bird, the poet continues, cannot see beyond his ‘bars of rage’. His wings are clipped, and his feet are tied. Hence,
he sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown
The caged one sings of an unknown freedom, and his longing echoes on the hill.
Angelou’s autobiography titled I know why the Caged Bird Sings is a testimony on how she overcame her shame, guilt and fear of expressing her thoughts and claimed her identity and rights.
In 1944, her persistence made her the first female African American streetcar conductor in San Francisco at the age of sixteen. Here was a female bird breaking open the cages of racial and gender barriers, and singing of the rising sun.
‘Caged Bird’ possesses a musical quality, with its concise verses. Words like ‘trill’, ‘hill’ and ‘still’ in the third and sixth stanzas transform the poem into a litany of freedom.
Do we name the sky? Do we own our dreams? Friend, do we dare to?
The writer is a poet, translator and assistant professor of English at BCM College, Kottayam.