My day or days go something like this…an urge to get into a productive and meaningful routine stsrts with tidying the kitchen and preparing lunch to the strains of PK’s live concert from the Sydney Opera House….
Later while scrolling through fb I chance on a PK post about a poem, it piques my interest, I look it up and store it, mull over it, decide that there is something deep, relevant to my own “stato d’anima” , I read it to Bill
And a Good Friday Was Had by All
Bruce Dawe
You men there, keep those women back
and God Almighty he laid down
on the crossed timber and old Silenus
my offsider looked at me as if to say
nice work for soldiers, your mind’s not your own
once you sign that dotted line Ave Caesar
and all that malarkey Imperator Rex
well this Nazarene
didn’t make it any easier
really-not like the ones
who kick up a fuss so you can
do your block and take it out on them
Silenus
held the spikes steady and I let fly
with the sledge-hammer, not looking
on the downswing trying hard not to hear
over the women’s wailing the bones give way
the iron shocking the dumb wood.
Orders is orders, I said after it was over
nothing personal you understand -we had a
drill-sergeant once thought he was God but he wasn’t
a patch on you
then we hauled on the ropes
and he rose in the hot air
like a diver just leaving the springboard, arms spread
so it seemed
over the whole damned creation
over the big men who must have had it in for him
and the curious ones who’ll watch anything if it’s free
with only the usual women caring anywhere
and a blind man in tears.
…and he sets me off on another hunt… and they call this Friday good, from
The Four Quartets – East Coker T.S. Elliot
IV
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That quesions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind us of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
Both poems recalled my lit studies, my cheeks burned red from the shame of having to read aloud in a tutorial and not knowing what it all meant. They were just words, meaningfully deep words and I did not have the key….
With age though comes wisdom and the knowledge of injustices passed on from one generation to the next….
The theme continued as we shared a Good Friday liturgy with friends via Zoom… the sadness of the loss of experiencing community as in past years threatened to overwhelm me, but I refocused and tried to live in the moment.
I realize that my somewhat maudilin penchant for melancholia is my response to a sense of deep loss… very different to the fear of missing out, I feel deeply the sense of loss that goes back in our family history.
What lessons then, should I draw from recent events? Bill says we are a people of hope…. yes we wait in the hope of bringing light to the world in whatever form that may take.
pindun on the road to Santiago de Compostella 