Perhaps the most frequently anthologized of Nissim Ezekiel’s vast oeuvre of poetic works in English, “Night of the Scorpion” is also most evocative of the cultural traditions of India, the country of his birth.

The poem presents a scary scenario in which a scorpion has bitten the speaker’s mother on a rainy night. Attempting to save her life, “the peasants came like swarms of flies” (Collected Poems, 1952–1988, 130). Ezekiel describes the eerie scene in which traditional chants and incantations were used to rid the poison of its sting. It is clear that the narrator, perhaps the poet himself, is skeptical of the peasants’ ability to save the mother merely through the power of words. Nevertheless, the peasants are permitted to work their verbal magic on the inert patient.

The strength and distinctiveness of this poem lies in the mantra-like chants evoked by the rhythmic repetition of prayerful lines and phrases, each of which ends with the words “they said.” As the multitude chants its prayers in unison, Ezekiel’s diction conveys both the urgency of the peasants’ utterances and the enchanted powers contained within them. Evident here are the polarities between the suave, intelligent, skeptical, educated narrator and the earthy, emotional, naive chanters, whose faith contrasts with the narrator’s seeming lack of religious belief. This opposition between traditionalism and modernity manifests the contrast that characterizes India’s teeming millions as a whole.

Strong visual images associated with prayer and ritual dominate this poem: candles, lanterns, paraffin, and matches. Like the narrator, his father, who was also present and is described as a “sceptic, rationalist,” refused to believe the powers of mystic chants and tried “every curse and blessing, / powder, mixture, herb and hybrid” (Collected Poems, 1952–1988, 131). His father’s efforts, however, were futile, and the narrator knew that only the powers of “the holy man” could effect a cure.

Twenty-four hours later the poison lost its sting, and his mother, upon waking, said only, “Thank God the scorpion picked on me / and spared my children” (Collected Poems, 1952–1988, 131). This utterance not only suggests the typical selflessness of the Indian mother, long evoked in traditional Indian epics and Hindu Vedic literature, but also brings to the seriousness of the larger and implicit contemporary situation a matter-of-fact tone that dispels the poem’s earlier gravity and creates an anticlimactic, albeit symbolic, conclusion that completely disarms the reader.

Categories: Literature, World Literature

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