circa 1781 :
“In the House of Commons about to be elected there would be fully a hundred Members under the age of thirty…Compared to only three MPs under the age of thirty elected in 2005.”
- William Hague, in William Wilberforce
They changed things then and we can still change them today.
A poet is the man who strives to communicate by means of abstract expression, formulating many sonnets to convey a thought. He calls beauty up from the earth and restores her majesty because he cannot endure her laying to waste in the ground. Ask me why I write: it is to sing- of life, love, misery, healing, and reckless abandon- like a nightingale into an open canyon with the hope that I’ll receive a song back from those who have been in hiding. To call beauty forth with a voice that is not entirely my own.
We are all poets if not by letter, then by action. Each moment, a line. Each day, a verse. Each person- all who have drawn in breath, in this sphere or other worlds- has been and become an epic poem.
Even then these epic odes are all threads; a variety of color, texture and weave, that are braided into one Story. The Story is Life, born in God’s mind before there was time. The Composer began with this line: “Let there be light” and all things were vividly set into motion, the Dawn of Time. You cannot avoid or destroy this notion; it’s nature is like the sun that rises and sets even if it cannot shine through the gray or stretch out across the shadowlands.
Light it up, ignite the fields to cast thirsty eyes upon this City on Hill. Or hide it beneath the shame of all you’ve laid to waste. But know this: by your silence, we will suffer your absence more than you can fathom.
God is a Poet, and you are His greatest work.
“For the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe….For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
I wrote once. Many times, a long long while ago. Before the leaves died in the fright of winter’s smite and fell to the earth, withered and old. Before the knife went in and came out red as innocence lost. I believed in a Wonderland that danced upon a solid rock of absolutes, ancient and invincible. But they are much more like the autumn leaves than I had once thought. With the loss of time, a rush of blood to the head, I cannot ignore the dizzying spell that is but a symptom of my chaotic dread. What once was, never was at all. My heroes, epic odes, romance that defies reality, and love that conquers all…seems to have withered in the fires and returned to me as dross. It took dying seven times seven and again before I lowered my neck to the stone, preparing for the final blow. There was no lament, mourning tearing to shreds, weeping in the city square. The streets were vacant, my heart laid bare. I was ready for death. But even then, like a thief, you stole that from me.
When I had nothing left on the earth, but a handful of ash you gave me one more story to tell. The fabled Phoenix, stirring and burning in the frozen ashes of funeral gone mad. Whispers of innocence, rumors of strength, the breath of One ushered beauty awake, for she had been slumbering in the lap of horror for far too long. He braided sinews on her dry bones and kissed her heart to beating to the rhythm of his own.
And then, I wanted to live.
