This poem above is actually a very loose translation of “Wild Honey” by the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.
The slightly altered title here is an acknowledgement of just how loose the translation is. The poem’s original was written (I think) in 1933. Stalin had been in power for around a decade and his purges were beginning.
I do not know Russian and have worked instead from other English translations, principally those by Jo Shapcott (as reproduced by “Moderrn Poetry in Translation) and Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky (as reproduced by the Indiana Review, Indiana University).
Akhmatova’s first verse, or section, is the more famous and the second is often left out of reproductions of her poem.
In that second section, Akhmatova uses two images of an unworthy leader : the first, Pontius Pilate (who washed his hands) ; the second, Mary Queen of Scots (who is suspected of being party to the murder of Lord Darnley). The poet would perhaps have preferred to refer more directly to Stalin, if she had been free to.
In the second section here, I go largely my own way and refer to my own time and country for images of unworthy leadership. In this, I am partly following Jo Shapcott’s example. But whereas her second section refers to the Iraq war, mine refers to the UK, in 2020. In doing so, I have no intention of implying that Mr Johnson’ s deployment of power is as tyrannical as Stalin’s, or includes Stalin’s murderousness. I am just observing a similar kind of fealty to the irresponsible Self and to the Lie.
The quote towards the end of this new poem is from “Requiem” by the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, translated by A.S. Kline, 2005. She was writing of the Stalinist purges. Her poem of witness was not published until decades later, in her old age.
WB Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” was written almost exactly a century ago, but if it’s possible for a poem to become truer still with age, then surely this one does.
And yet…Yeats wrote his poem in 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence (he was Irish). The poem is also connected to the 1918-1919 ‘flu pandemic. In the weeks preceding Yeats’ writing of the poem, his pregnant wife Georgie Hyde-Lees caught the virus and nearly died. He composed it during her convalescence.
The new poem above, written yesterday, contains several direct quotes from Yeats’ extraordinary lines.
“The Conversion of Saul” by Michelangelo, Pauline Chapel fresco, Vatican City.
This “I” we each inherit, made spine
of the world, axis, pole,
look-out from the world’s helm
gazing on the universe,
gazing on you,
gazing on death…
“Mummy,” I said,
seven or eight years old,
“I have decided
that I am God.”
We were walking east
along Glebe Road
towards the shops on Upper Mulgrave,
my right hand held in her left.
“Oh, what makes you say
a thing like that, dear ? How
can you think that you are God ?”
“Because I draw
everyone’s eyes, somehow,
towards me. It can only mean that they
know that I am God. And then I close
my eyes and they
just disappear. Further proof, you see,
my mother,
that I am God.”
My mother’s mind –
destined in her last years to shrink
and leave her
speechless and helpless in her bed –
had been engaged, just then, on other concerns
than holding hands with God.
“Surely it just means
that their eyes are idly resting on you
while their attention wanders
down secret avenues
miles away,” she said. “And, my son,
it is quite enough for me that you
are just you,” she added.
“Just me ?” I felt let down.
I and all those other people knew
quite well that I was God.
Yet my own beloved
mother refused to recognise
who it was here walking at her side
eastward along Glebe Road
aiming for Upper Malgrave.
“There’s no such thing as ‘just me,’
I said to myself. “‘Just‘ means nobody.
I am I.
‘I’ means God.”
Rogan Wolf, July 2020
The poem’s story is true, as best I can remember it. I wonder how my mother felt.
And I think I’m talking psychology here, or what is often called “human development.”
At the time described by the poem, I was clearly old enough to have become dimly aware of some of the momentous issues and questions that surround us all and I was trying to make sense of them. And my conclusion on this one, the wonder and miracle of Selfhood and the mystery and difficulty of its relationship with Other, seemed the only logical one available.
How else to make sense of my growing inwardness, the wild and shadowy world of it, all my own, as compared to, and surrounded by, all these other living forms, so powerful in their different ways, many looking a bit like me, but never of me, always outside of me, and outward in themselves to me, coming out of the world, at me ?
But then at some point, you move past that child’s position which assumes “I” is essentially different and singular, pole of the universe, surrounded by the world and, beyond that, by the universe ; you reach past that child’s delusion (and terror ?) of omnipotence and realise – whatever the word “realise” really means – that the universe did not appoint you as its single and central pole and axis. Everyone you meet, even every thing you meet, is as much pole of the universe as you are, and all look out at you, just as you look out at them. As they might seem your objects, so you might be theirs.
It is thus the case and the fact that you, and all else outside of me, matter as much as I do. That is the adult fact of the matter. As I matter, so do you. We are members one of another. That is the fact. Anything else is delusion, a retreat from the wonderment and bewilderment of reality.
But how on earth do you get to that adult position from the one experienced on Glebe Road, aged seven or eight ? And do you really arrive there by a certain age, and then stay there ? And do we all get there, or do some of us never arrive ? And if it turns out to be too difficult to stay solidly and consistently in this adult state of awareness of reality, how much of each day do most of us spend in a state of retreat and relapse into the ego-centric child’s delusional world-view ?
I am no Christian. I do not “believe” the tenets of the creed which those shrinking congregations speak together during their age-old assemblies. For instance, I have no doubt but that death is final and complete. And I cannot, and have no need to, believe that Jesus Christ was conceived by any process other than the usual human one. And I cannot, and have no need to, believe that the stone literally rolled away and he was literally resurrected. I do not associate myself with this or any other formal religion, or belief system. But neither can I deny that when I take part in Christian liturgy worthily conveyed, I respond with a deep sense that what I am hearing, is closer to human reality and our condition than anything else I hear in my life as I go about it in our present times. The standards, priorities and insights being articulated here are right in their essence. The images are accurately evocative, more accurate than anything else I encounter. The essential vision seeking expression here is the truth and is still radical and profoundly questioning. Holy is real, here. And this air of reverence is apt and good to breathe..
But I have trouble with the Christian use of the word “love.” It has too much human history trailing after it, weakening it. Too many instances of hypocrisy. Too strong an association with mere self-righteousness and the repression of true emotion, a drawing back from passion. Too strong an association, too, with a mere cuddly personal feeling, a limp mildness. You don’t need a halo, or a cowl, to look reality in the face.
I put more faith in cooler words than “love.” Words like “recognition” or “realisation.” That state of awakeness reached when you see and begin to act in recognition of the fact and reality that I am not the only centre of the universe, that you and all else outside of me matter as much as I do.
I even presume to think that this is contained in the shadow, maybe even the kernel, of St Paul’s majestic words in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13, ending : “…And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” (Authorised (King James) version).
The Latin for charity is “caritas” although it can also be translated as love and most present translations follow the latter reading. And the New Testament was originally written in Greek and the word Paul actually wrote was apparently agapē (ἀγάπη) meaning a personal, passionate form of love. The love a parent might have for his/her child, as for someone infinitely precious, closely connected in flesh, blood and spirit.
So I am on shaky ground here, in questioning this word “love”. But being a parent does not require you to be blinded one day along the road, or wear a dog collar or a halo, to be “holy.” It does not need you to be meek, or passionless, or “pure.” It does, however, need you to be reasonably adult and to be able to treasure, appropriately, a life that relies for a viable future on your nurturing and recognition and loyalty.
So the eight year old who thought that he was God, as the only way he could explain to himself the mystery and wonder and immeasurable preciousness of selfhood, learned later than everyone else has the same experience, and is as central as he. He may shut his eyes as often as he likes ; in truth, those other people don’t disappear. That step, from delusion into realisation, was a momentous one and I think it took me a while. I think quite possibly, in fact, I am still taking it. When I have finished taking it, I shall become an adult.
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child : but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face : now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
To deny the preciousness, the equal centrality, of those around you, those “Others,” is to deny the truth and reality of your own preciousness. It is the infinite preciousness of our plain, shared, endangered reality.
“What is the purpose of poetry ?” I ask myself. Sometimes I find this question simple to answer. And sometimes the answer itself is simple. The purpose of poetry is to work.
This poem seems to follow on a bit from the previous one uploaded here. But whereas I wrote “I Insist my Ribs…” over three years ago, “Counting” has been written in the last few days.
I have a vague idea of what was in my mind as I wrote this latest poem. And looking at it now, I’m increasingly seeing things which were not in my mind at all, but which inserted themselves anyway.
I suppose it is a bit of a “what am I ?” poem. Or “what is my value and where shall I find it ?” And I think the main impetus for it comes from the context in which we are all now living, at least here in the UK. An incessant and utterly reductive quantifying of information at all levels, but used by the market and by those presently in political power to manipulate us without principle and without care, purely for the sake of their own immediate (and hollow) advantage.
Of course, the poem rests to an extent on a humble pun, or double meaning. The verb “to count.” It means to tot up, to add up ; but equally to matter, to have significance.
But the poem also rests on a much more fundamental dichotomy, or duality. I am not just a list of measurable quantities, it says, although those do exist and I do belong in them. Much more than that, I am a carrier, a source and messenger, of qualities. The world is of quality, not just quantity. It is in the the world of qualities where I can best find myself and am best found. In the how of things, not just the what.
Which brings us to other dichotomies, such as the two brain hemispheres, the left and the right, the left in denial of the crucial primacy of the right, even of the need for the right to exist. Our nation’s essentially fraudulent and fundamentally unworthy Prime Minister is called Mr Johnson (I call him Mr Toad). Mr Toad’s very dangerous senior advisor is a human exemplar of the left-side brain hemisphere bursting its banks and running amok, and of the abusive felonies which result.
Cummings fights for, and glories in, a world run according to the left hand side of the brain. In his case, this seems to go with a virulent hatred of, and contempt for, anything or anyone living according to different and saner principles. Having “taken the measure” of the creation he sees before him, he’ll seek to manipulate it so as to control it, reduce it, “whack it,” subsume it. Chaos and division result.
He “couldn’t care a flying fuck,” a PR agent told Adam Forrest of “The Independent,” on Cummings’ reaction to the uproar that followed his Durham/Rose Garden excursions. He has a “very thick skin,” apparently. It’s almost as if not caring – or rather, “not caring a flying fuck” – is a new desirable. Being a miniature dinosaur in service to AI really “gets it done.” It’s the ultimate triumph. A perfection of control.
Towards the end, the new poem quotes the greeting “I see you,” a traditional Zulu greeting. This link is to some thoughts on the subject, written by a South African, Bridget Edwards.
Here’s a paragraph from her piece : “According to Peter de Jager, the Zulu greeting ‘Sawubona’ means ‘I see you’ and the response, ‘Ngikhona’ means ‘I am here’. As always when translating from one language to another, crucial subtleties are lost. Inherent in the Zulu greeting and our grateful response, is the sense that until you saw me, I didn’t exist. By recognizing me, you brought me into existence. A Zulu folk saying clarifies this, ‘Umuntu ngumuntu nagabantu’, meaning, ‘A person is a person because of other people’.”
Bridget Edwards, also mentions another traditional greeting, this originally from the Sanskrit, and still used in India by Hindi speakers : “Namaste.” The greeting is accompanied by a bow, with palms pressed together as if in prayer. I bow to the god in you, the divine spark I see in you and seek and serve in me, knowing it is there, connecting us.
Now back again to the African continent. An encounter between bush men of the Kalahari, recorded by Laurens van der Post. The one begins with an ancient greeting : “Good day. I saw you from afar and I am dying of hunger.”
The other’s right hand is raised, palm open, fingers up.
“Good day!” says this other person. “I have been dead, but now that you have come, I live again.”
In a very real sense, these formalities express a recognition of the human individual’s place in community which has been shared across the world, in all the major faiths and traditions.
Here, for instance, are words written by the late David Jenkins, as Bishop of Durham, (“the Red Bishop”) making reference to St Paul’s letter to the Romans” : “We are members one of another.”
And here’s Martin Buber, the great Jewish thinker and writer : ““As I become I, I say Thou…All real living is meeting.”
What clear-seeing there has been in human history, despite its horrors. Where has the clear-seeing gone ?
“Hi !” we say to each other. And our Dom, (I call him the deathwatch doom beetle), senior advisor to a UK Prime Minister, couldn’t care a flying fuck.
The poem also mentions a panther. It is of course a reference to Rilke’s great poem. The panther encaged in a tiny space, pacing without end.
