Each morning I awake
And shake my tired head
Another day...
I heat the old cold coffee
Then the panic hits me
'My God!, you lunatic!
What have you done?
Look what you wrote!
Do you remember what you said?
You imagined it all!'
Dreadful waking fever dreams
Cursed amygdalan frenzies
...Then it starts again
A sinking seeping sadness
Creeping in
That feeling of this world
Breaking
Like waves of the sea
Crashing on us, on me
Suffering swelling
Hate virus spreading
Until empathy is madness
And if you're not insane
In this way, in this world
You too must be crazy
(And again the words
Or my skills fail me)
These days I often fall out of bed
(Stupefied by senseless times)
I stand to attention
Ready again to wrestle 1
That dark angel2
A never-ending war
At best, to draw
Unspeakable sounds
From out of thin air
Isn’t so much pain-earned art
Just a richer description
Of the ‘self’ in fall?
The craft keeping alive
A feeling of complete control
Yet, it is only mastery
Of the strokes we use to trace
The destruction of that place
We thought our home
The song of a soul
That must suffer to grow
Crying out, in a kind of praise
For God's most awful
Gifts of grace3
The unwanted loved lament
Resonating
Each reverberating
Breaking heart
And though we poets know
Our universe ensures
All fools who sing
The Truth must fail
Yet, still we vow
To speak that truth
(The part we are blessed to hear)
Until
The end
“...Because you do not wrestle with your angel.
Because you dare to live without God.
Because your cowardice has led you to believe that the victor does not limp.“
(Leonard Cohen, 'Book of Mercy')
"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God"
(Aeschylus c.525–456 bc, from 'Agamemnon')
Peter Howitt
