For Elkana
A warm April evening
Explain how the poem places the idyllic beside the ordinary, and the husband's asides.
Nissim Ezekiel's poem 'For Elkana' opens on a warm April evening. A husband and wife carry their chairs out onto the lawn, to sit in the breeze. It is an idyllic (peaceful and pleasant) scene.
Then the wife looks around, and comments on a broken window-pane.
She goes on to list the household jobs that every husband in the neighbourhood is able to do, except the one she loves: the speaker, her own husband.
He does not want to argue with what he calls the 'fact' that she is always right. So he looks inward, into his own thoughts, and quietly shuts her out.
The poem places the peaceful evening side by side with small household complaints, and the husband's private comments add a gentle humour.
A lovely evening, a broken window, and a silent husband.
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