Mow.

Incubator

The tiny baby sleeps in a cage of wires.
Lights blink on and off:

its legs are thin as matches, and its hair
a fuzz of limpid gold.

Sometimes it arches its tiny body,
Stretches itself and yawns.

delicate as an egg in that machinery
which sings its own quiet time.

Machine, you are my mother now, you feed
with the slow drop of time.

It is warm here, sleepless mother,
raise me to run one day

with my leather schoolbag among blossoms
on a day of lessons and fire.

Wakeful machinery, be good to me.
hear me if I don't breathe.

and ring you alarm bell, the panic
of your kind breast of steel.

Machine, let us sleep together,
on the bosom of the night.

till I grow tall, till I leave you
and seek soft human arms.

a. What are your impressions of the baby?
b. With close reference to the poem, identify and explain how the poet conveys his view of the baby to his readers?
[25 marks]

I understand the poem, but I can't answer so long.
And this is supposed to be much easier than "Carousel".
T_T

Let's compare this with the longer poem which is supposed to be harder:

Carousel by Lucinda Roy

I often spin around with you and hear
the fragile music of a carousel.
I feel your black arms around me in a heavy sweep
of closeness, taking me up on notes which fall
likes eggs through water.

I am older now
and you have fallen from the garish horse
a long time since, and I am holding on
with thin brown fingers. Do you know
it's been a quarter century since you
(with your voice like the man who plays God in the movies)
kissed me? I don't remember your kisses.
I remember you wearing stripe pyjamas
and waving to me from the ward - your great hand
scooping a half-circle out of nothing;
how my brother almost choked on a Lifesaver
until a male nurse turned him upside down
and out came the white mint with the hole
that saved him.

I dreamed you died, and when I woke
my mother was by the bed. 'How will I light
the fire?' she said. I didn't know.

It was cold in our hourse; our breath came out
round as balloons and dissolved till we breathed
again. We learned to accommodate spaces
as you must have learned to accommodate...
but no. Where there is no place to put things,
there cannot be a place for spaces.
It must be fine to know only lack of substance -
the round emptiness in an angel's trumpet -
and still hear music.

I have the things you made
and she has made us see you in them.
I have the ivory statues and the pictures
telling stories of African ancestors,
a birth, flights into Egypt. In your work
I find the stillness of your eyes and mouth
the stillness which is always at the centre
of the spinning ball we hurl high and long.

I often spin around with you and hear
the fragile music of a carousel.
My horse would gallop forward if I let him
but I prefer the swinging back to where
we were, slow undulations round and back
to identical place. I prefer to see
your black hands with mine on a crimson mane
which will never be swept back by the wind.

Phew!! -breathless- Tiring!!! Anyway, compare the poems. Both were separate preliminary exams in two different schools.
Argue your case, which is more difficult?
Sometimes short poems are more difficult to answer.
Sometimes long poems are more difficult to understand.

You think?

P.S: If you think upper sec lit is like sec 2 lit, think agaiiiiiiinnnnnnnnn.

posted by Michelle @ 2:53 PM