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    The Trees

    Uploaded by

    Nisha Nair
    The trees that were inside the house are moving out into the empty forest. Overnight, the trees' roots work to disengage from the floor and their leaves and branches strain toward freedom. By morning, the forest will be full of trees again as they stumble forward into the night, their movement causing the winds to rush and the moon's reflection in the trees' crowns to shatter like a broken mirror.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    The Trees

    Uploaded by

    Nisha Nair
    61 views3 pages
    The trees that were inside the house are moving out into the empty forest. Overnight, the trees' roots work to disengage from the floor and their leaves and branches strain toward freedom. By morning, the forest will be full of trees again as they stumble forward into the night, their movement causing the winds to rush and the moon's reflection in the trees' crowns to shatter like a broken mirror.

    Original Title

    08._the_trees

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    The trees that were inside the house are moving out into the empty forest. Overnight, the trees' roots work to disengage from the floor and their leaves and branches strain toward freedom. By morning, the forest will be full of trees again as they stumble forward into the night, their movement causing the winds to rush and the moon's reflection in the trees' crowns to shatter like a broken mirror.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    61 views3 pages

    The Trees

    Uploaded by

    Nisha Nair
    The trees that were inside the house are moving out into the empty forest. Overnight, the trees' roots work to disengage from the floor and their leaves and branches strain toward freedom. By morning, the forest will be full of trees again as they stumble forward into the night, their movement causing the winds to rush and the moon's reflection in the trees' crowns to shatter like a broken mirror.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    You are on page 1of 3

    The Trees

    Can there be a forest without trees? Where are the trees in this
    poem, and where do they go?

    The trees inside are moving out into the forest,


    the forest that was empty all these days
    where no bird could sit
    no insect hide
    no sun bury its feet in shadow
    the forest that was empty all these nights
    will be full of trees by morning.

    All night the roots work


    to disengage themselves from the cracks
    in the veranda floor.
    The leaves strain toward the glass
    small twigs stiff with exertion
    long-cramped boughs shuffling under the roof
    like newly discharged patients
    half-dazed, moving
    to the clinic doors.

    I sit inside, doors open to the veranda


    writing long letters
    in which I scarcely mention the departure
    of the forest from the house.
    The night is fresh, the whole moon shines
    in a sky still open
    the smell of leaves and lichen
    still reaches like a voice into the rooms.
    My head is full of whispers
    which tomorrow will be silent.
    Listen. The glass is breaking.
    The trees are stumbling forward
    into the night. Winds rush to meet them.
    The moon is broken like a mirror,
    its pieces flash now in the crown
    of the tallest oak.

    ADRIENNE RICH

    Adrienne Rich was born in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. in 1929. She is


    the author of nearly twenty volumes of poetry, and has been called a
    feminist and a radical poet.
    First Flight

    to disengage themselves: to separate themselves


    strain: make efforts to move
    bough: branch
    shuffling: moving repeatedly from one position to another
    100 lichen: crusty patches or bushy growth on tree trunks/bare ground formed by
    association of fungus and alga.

    1. (i) Find, in the first stanza, three things that cannot happen in a treeless
    forest.
    (ii) What picture do these words create in your mind: “… sun bury its feet
    in shadow…”? What could the poet mean by the sun’s ‘feet’?
    2. (i) Where are the trees in the poem? What do their roots, their leaves, and
    their twigs do?
    (ii) What does the poet compare their branches to?
    3. (i) How does the poet describe the moon: (a) at the beginning of the third
    stanza, and (b) at its end? What causes this change?
    (ii) What happens to the house when the trees move out of it?
    (iii) Why do you think the poet does not mention “the departure of the forest
    from the house” in her letters? (Could it be that we are often silent
    about important happenings that are so unexpected that they embarrass
    us? Think about this again when you answer the next set of questions.)
    4. Now that you have read the poem in detail, we can begin to ask what the
    poem might mean. Here are two suggestions. Can you think of others?
    (i) Does the poem present a conflict between man and nature? Compare it
    with A Tiger in the Zoo. Is the poet suggesting that plants and trees,
    used for ‘interior decoration’ in cities while forests are cut down, are
    ‘imprisoned’, and need to ‘break out’?
    (ii) On the other hand, Adrienne Rich has been known to use trees as a
    metaphor for human beings; this is a recurrent image in her poetry.
    What new meanings emerge from the poem if you take its trees to be
    symbolic of this particular meaning?
    5. You may read the poem ‘On Killing a Tree’ by Gieve Patel (Beehive – Textbook
    in English for Class IX, NCERT). Compare and contrast it with the poem you
    have just read.

    Homophones
    Can you find the words below that are spelt 101
    similarly, and sometimes even pronounced
    similarly, but have very different meanings? Check
    their pronunciation and meaning in a dictionary.
    • The dump was so full that it had to refuse more
    refuse.
    • When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

    The Trees
    • The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

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