Life

It is strange how the human condition is perceived and recorded. Not necessarily the dry APA (American Psychiatric Association) style required for “research papers” presented by neuroscientists or psychiatrists in their appropriate “Journals” but the more human kind - nearer the “heart” of humanity. The best of these are good novelists and especially, in my estimation, poets.

The human conditions or emotions most recorded in poetry, song and novels are, I believe, love, birth, life and death – those important milestones in anyone’s life.

As I have stated many times before, poetry affects me in more ways than I can possibly say. Poetry seems to touch some hidden part of my soul. There have always been poets – often, in olden times, troubadours bringing news and songs to far flung villages. And it was discovered very early on that the best way to remember long stories was to render them into verse. The rhyme and rhythm was easier to recall.

The rhythm is often associated with the beating of the human heart and a good reciter of poetry seems to capture that as he or she reads from the volume or recites from memory. This resonates with the listener.

I can only read in English so everything I read is either originally written in that language or translated. Whether it is the flexibility and the vast vocabulary of that language I’m not sure but there is a massive treasure trove of English poetry.  

I usually include a verse or two from a poem that has made an impression on me but now I attach below, the whole of what I think is my favourite poem written by a man I greatly admire and who suffered greatly – the American, Henry Longfellow. He married twice but both wives died – the first after a miscarriage in 1831 and his beloved second wife died an awful death, burned in a tragic accident in their home in 1861, a death from which he never really recovered. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 75 in 1882. A great poet and a great man.

The Day is Done

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me

That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay,

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,

Not from the bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,

Their mighty thoughts suggest

Life's endless toil and endeavor;

And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer,

Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,

And nights devoid of ease,

Still heard in his soul the music

Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,

And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,

And the cares, that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.

                        Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Love in poetry and song

It is not often that I am at a loss for words. But now, today, three years after Magucha died, there is a numbness, a weariness - I am finding it difficult to find the words to express the inexpressible. I mean three years, in the great scheme of things, is but a blink in time. Not to me though.

My belief: It cannot be that courage, friendship, intuition, empathy are all the result of chance or chemistry alone. This just doesn’t make any sense to me!

My belief: I cannot hold to the theory that love is just the result of hormonal juices, or synaptic chemical transfer.

That love – and I don’t just mean the “boy meets girl” initial attraction. I mean that love, that friendship, that companionship, that unquestioning acceptance of the “other”. This is rare and worth holding onto with everything at one’s disposal.

  

I like to believe that we had this – Magucha and I.

As always in times of high emotion I turn to the poets. Their understanding of the frailness of the human condition; their unique use of words have a restorative power that I find brings me peace. 

The 19^thCentury American poet, Henry Longfellow, I can relate to – he married twice. Each time his wife died – one in very tragic circumstances. But he was a great poet and apparently a very kind and gentle man.

Amongst many he wrote the poem, “A Shadow” – the last lines of which are:-

“Be comforted; the world is very old,

And generations pass, as they have passed,

A troop of shadows moving with the sun;

Thousands of times has the old tale been told;

The world belongs to those who come the last,

They will find hope and strength as we have done.”

So be it.

Reflections on a peaceful time.

I seems a long time ago now – in a different “age”; in a different country and certainly in a different culture. But in reality it was only about fifty years ago.

I was attending Rhodes University, in Grahamstown, South Africa, as a student – a few years older that the teenagers around me, but still only in my early twenties. I soon found a comfortable place to reflect and be at peace  – which is something I have always found, somewhere, as I rightly or wrongly consider myself to be of a relatively solitary disposition, and have never been afraid of my own company. My peaceful place was a viewpoint on a hill behind the University campus. I have forgotten the name of the hill but it provided a wonderful view of Grahamstown and the hills and mountains in the far distance.

My preferred time for a “visit” was in the evening just before sunset. I would sit there watching as the twilight faded into darkness and the streetlights suddenly flicking on brightly. I also witnessed the lights in homes suddenly turn on as people returned from their work – giving a strangely domestic feel to the scene as it unfolded before me.

Poetry, as those who read my posts will attest, has always given me solace and this scene, as described, always reminded me of the poem “The Day in Done”, by the American, Henry Longfellow. I won’t inflict on you the entire poem but the first verses are what have stayed in my mind when I remember this time of my life. It is also apposite now, I suppose, as I find myself having to contemplate my future and whatever it may hold:-

The day is done, and darkness

Falls from the wings of night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me

That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

Come read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay,

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

And banish the thoughts of day.