POEMS ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION ...

One Certainty

Vanity of vanities, the Preacher saith,

All things are vanity. The eye and ear

Cannot be filled with what they see and hear.

Like early dew, or like the sudden breath

Of wind, or like the grass that withereth,

Is man, tossed to and fro by hope and cheer,

Till all things end in the long dust of death.

Today is still the same as yesterday,

Tomorrow also even as one of them;

And there is nothing new under the sun:

Until the ancient race of Time be run,

The old thorns shall grow out of the old stem,

And morning shall be cold and twilight grey.

Christina Rossetti

 

Inside Out

A man I know whose father used to slap him

on the back of his head

when he put his elbows on the table

still knows the explicit taste of that humiliation

the saltiness of snot and held-back tears

that sting his tongue sometimes

when he sits down to dinner

this is not a memory

it's what another friend - a woman

feels as ice in the pit of her stomach

when she's dressing for a party

cold as the telephone receiver

in her palm - the boyfriend who never showed up

laughing at her drunkenly at one a.m.

and she's sixteen again

in a yellow formal staring

at the flecks of nailpolish - the crusted rings

her coffee cups have left

on the grey top of the kitchen table

it's not the recounting of childhood

I'm telling you about - the versions of it

handed out to friends when we return

like condescending ghosts who peer in

on the antics of the living

with futile "if only I had knowns' on their lips

not that at all - it's the immediate

cramping in my stomach

when I see an african violet for example

that private mingling of shame and anger

tightening the cords in my neck

and strangling my tongue as I explain again

to Mrs. Frederick my grade-three teacher

that what happened to them was an accident

and she says I'm a liar

I'm not I'm not though Mrs. Frederick

still thinks so and

it still matters.

is this making any sense

try it this way

maybe you've noticed yourself that as you grow

older you take comfort in being the same

as your friends - calling yourselves a generation

comparing phases pleased to find

your children and theirs are the same age

and then one night a bunch of you

together at a party say and one of the men

gets a little drunk and enters a night

when he was thirteen camping with a friend

in a rickety pup-tent and hearing the racket

of a bear in the cooler they'd left outside

the two of them crouched in the swaying tent

ready to fight it off with jack-knives

and maybe you've noticed then how this man's

voice (a man with sons of his own to keep

from danger) how his voice cracks and the hand

with the jack-knife in it flails above his head

as if the process of the body's changing

every seven years had suddenly reversed and speeded up

the cells returning to him that

pure fearlessness - pure terror

haven't you felt it yourself

in whatever moment

chooses you like that

a moment you thought you'd left forever

carrying the person you were then

like a half-tamed animal tenderly in your arms

haven't you felt yourself

surrendered to the starkness of that instant

when you become the child again

unique and alone as only children are

staring out at the world

from the stubborn depths of it.

Bronwen Wallace

 

Dover Beach

The sea is calm tonight,

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Agean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold, 1867

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Robert Frost