Poems I Journey With 6

Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918) from early on became one of my favourite poets.  Firstly, as a young boy and as a teenager I was always fascinated with wars, especially World War 1 and World War II, not from the military point of view solely, but primarily because of the havoc it had wrought on the world through the destruction of human life and property on such a vast scale.  Such wanton destruction on such unprecedented scales amazed and astounded me. That humanity veered so quickly and so spontaneously towards war, rather than engaging in political debate and conflict resolution was also an intriguing feature that seemed to suggest that there was something rather corrupt that stank to high heaven within the human make-up.  Then, I discovered the War Poets from both world wars, and those from the first of these wars were the more moving for me as that war in particular involved  the first widespread use of machine guns, air power, submarine operations, armoured vehicles, bigger and more powerful guns and the use of poison gas and, of course, the mad rush of opposing troops against each other across NO-MAN'S-LAND, all of which led the poets to describe the horrors of war in such graphic detail that I was hooked forever and still moved, often to tears, by their words and images.  To them we owe a great debt of gratitude for highlighting these horrors.  Wilfred Owen was only 25 when he was killed on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre-Oise Canal exactly a week before the signing of the Armistice that ended the War.  In a rather ironic twist of fate, his poor mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day just as the bells rang out in jubilation at the cessation of hostilities.  He is buried at Ors Communal Cemetery.

Lieutenant W. Owen

Owen is the foremost poet of the Great War and his poems are much anthologized. Therefore, I will not publish any of his more popular ones hereunder as the reader will be almost too familiar with them.  Instead, I will quote here another powerful, but less well known poem from his pen:

The Parable of The Young Man and The Old

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned, both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake, and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets the trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one. 

Wilfred Owen

There is no need for commentary on this wonderful little poem save to say that it is crafted with care and based on the famous Old Testament story of God's command to Abraham to slay his son Isaac by way of offering to appease Him.  Those of us, au fait with mythology will know that such an image of God as a rather cruel task-master, who seemingly has no concern for morality as He is somehow beyond all such standards of proper behaviour, will realize that this is pure story, a story with a moral or a message - a story composed by priests or scribes simply to teach us lessons.  The lesson here is simply that God often tests our loyalty in strange and even cruel ways.  Whatever about Old Testament times the twentieth century unleashed the wrath of a most bloody God or Gods - Gods of greed and hate and vengeance - that slew "half the seed of Europe, one by one."  As an officer, the young Lieutenant Owen would have witnessed so much bloodshed and so many horrible deaths of his soldier comrades that it must have surely felt that some bloodthirsty gods somewhere were slaying the young men of Europe one by one.  This is not one of his famous poems, but I feel it is beautifully written, and most solemnly so as it practically repeats the beautiful English of the King James Bible and interweaves in the story images from the horrors of the First World War: "fire and iron," "belts and straps" (soldiers would have had many of these about their uniforms) and "parapets and trenches."  However, it is the last two lines that are the most effective for me as they sum up the horrors of the Great War:

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one. 

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 70

Poem 70

My teachings are easy to understand

and easy to put into practice.

Yet your intellect will never grasp them,

and if you try to practise them, you'll fail.

My teachings are older than the world.

How can you grasp their meaning?

If you want to know me,

look inside your heart.

Commentary

I remember years ago at college a lecturer fulminating against those who attempted to paraphrase poetry, quite simply because it destroyed the magic, the very essence of the poem and the poetic enterprise.  In similar manner, that same lecturer and many other colleagues encouraged us never to ask the question "what does a poem mean?"  They believed that a poem just was what it was or is what it is and that the readers should allow the words to work their magic on them in  their own way and in their own time. Let's use a mathematical concept here in order to further our understanding of what these lecturers were at.  Those of you accustomed to mathematics will know all about functions and the one to one correspondence of elements in the domain and the range.  No element in the domain can be mapped onto two elements in the range.  If we use this mathematical concept we could say that a paraphrase attempts a one to one correspondence between words and their significance, between poem and meaning: in short, it tries to make the poem out to be a mere one dimensional functional thing.  A poem cannot denote like a function denotes; rather it connotes many levels of meaning.  Hence, no simplified paraphrase will ever suffice; no on-to-one correspondence will be adequate.

Likewise, our above spiritual poem defies simplification or oversimplification.  Once again, our Taoist poet uses exaggeration and paradox and he either overstates or understates things thus: He tells us his teachings are easy to understand; that our intellect will never grasp them (two contradictory sentiments); that if we try to practise his teachings of the Master or of the Tao we will fail; that the teachings of either Master or Tao are beyond our human understanding; and that the journey into the Tao begins with diving deep into our own hearts. This latter assertion is pure Augustinianism or pure "interiority" as St Augustine called the meditative or contemplative way of discovering God within our own souls.  He also called that that phenomenon the "indwelling of the Holy Spirit."

However, my advice to any reader of poems is to let the poem be, let it call forth all the associations, personal and otherwise that it sparks in the mind and heart of the reader.  My recommendation is similar for spiritual writings.  All such works are attempting the nigh impossible - to capture the movement of the human heart towards God and the movement of the Divine towards humankind.  Insofar as it is engaged in that task, those spiritual writings, of necessity, employ the use of metaphors, similes, comparisons, parables, stories, allusions and connotations, and all these devices serve to strike resonances of all kinds in the mind and heart of the reader.  In like manner, that is what we have to do with the above rather paradoxical and enigmatic poem.  Read the words in a contemplative way, seeking not to understand them in the head, but rather to accept their multiple and contradictory meanings with the heart.

Namaste, friends. 

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 49

Poem 49

The Master has no mind of her own.

She works with the mind of the people.

She is good to people who are good.

She is also good to people who aren't good.

This is true goodness.

She trusts people who are trustworthy.

She also trusts people who aren't trustworthy.

This is true trust.

The Master's mind is like space.

People don't understand her.

They look to her and wait.

She treats them like her own children.

Commentary

The River Vltava in Prague with the Castle in the background

The first thing that strikes a reader of the above Taoist poem is that the Master or the Tao is totally non-judgemental, and treats all with an even hand, no matter whether they are good or bad.  Also, in keeping with the plurality in unity that is a hallmark of Taoist thinking, the translator S. Mitchell sees the Master as feminine here. (He alternates between "he" and "she" superbly and seamlessly in his version of the Tao Te Ching.)   This strikes us immediately as a much more compassionate approach than that of the God of the Old Testament who is presented as a rather dictatorial judge.  The Tao is such that

She is good to people who are good.

She is also good to people who aren't good.

This is true goodness.

However, one must also point out that the Bible has various viewpoints within it and that it is not at all as monochrome as some more fundamentalist interpreters would want it.  There are often contrary and contradictory texts in that same book or rather collection of books. Therefore, an astute reader of the Biblical texts will be open to quite a variety of possible interpretations, especially of the more controversial texts.  For instance, the Wisdom literature openly questioned God's justice when the authors lamented the fact that evil doers prosper as well as those who do good, and that, further, many good people really do suffer in this life and often die young.  Educated readers of the Bible will realise that it was written by many writers over many centuries and that each had a viewpoint that mirrored the times and contexts of the communities of faith in which they dwelt.  They will also realise that the Bible is a collection of books, written by many authors over many centuries and that consequently their concept of God grew as they increased in their knowledge of Him.  

We are never alone: Prague, February 2016

We all know how hard it is to trust others, but the Tao is a mystery or mystical presence that trusts all, it would appear.  It is rather hard for us emotional beings to grasp this, given that we are instinctively prone to retribution.  For us Christians, Jesus stood all of that old law of Old Testament retribution, that "lex talionis" on its head.  Being totally committed to peace and compassion for all, Jesus even forgave his tormentors and crucifiers by understanding that they truly "knew not what they were doing."  Likewise, many commentators say that the Parable of the Prodigal Son can also be construed as the Parable of the Older Brother as this brother illustrates well the all-too-human reaction of most of us when others are forgiven for their years of disloyalty while the always loyal servants (ourselves) have been overlooked by a goodness and justice that goes beyond the boundaries of human love.  It is in this sense that the Tao trusts all of us, that is in a parallel sense to how the Christian God loves those who sin and fall away.  The Taoist lines above are therefore worth repeating and contemplating once again here:

  She trusts people who are trustworthy.

She also trusts people who aren't trustworthy.

This is true trust.

In conclusion, our Taoist poet emphasises the power of a mother's love - a love that knows no boundaries for her offspring.  It is indeed little wonder that the image of mother is quite often attributed to God and the Tao and to many deities in a multitude of religions.  Many years ago, I remember an old teacher who taught me saying that one unruly pupil was truly a child that "only a mother could love."  I instinctively knew what he meant.

The Master's mind is like space.

People don't understand her.

They look to her and wait.

She treats them like her own children.