In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk

  • Here in the UK, knowing that it’s National Poetry Day today, I have just written the poem above. Things seem to happen faster in old age. The name Danby in the poem’s text refers to John F. Danby, a literary critic who wrote a rather wonderful book called ‘Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature – A Study of King Lear.’ The book’s scope and reach seem larger, somehow, than just literary criticism.

    In the play, Edgar is young where Lear is old, but Edgar belonged to Lear’s court, he was of that played-out world. Well disguised, he accompanies Lear in his exile and stays with him on the heath and in the tempest. He doesn’t share Lear’s madness but all his privations he does. Through being broken with Lear, he is allowed to succeed him.

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  • Click on the text and the poem will expand a bit and be easier to read. It had to be this small, to fit onto a single page. 

    Only a few months ago, we were celebrating the Platimum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, a living symbol of stability among so much in the world that is anything but stable. But then, soon afterwards, both Queen Elizabeth herself and what she represented to so many, fell away from us, into our past. On Sunday, September 11th, I recited this poem at an open air event, to thousands of people who had not come here to grieve, but were now doing just that, even while we played. The poem was followed by a minute of near perfect silence.    

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  • September 6th was, of course, the date on which Mr Johnson stood down as prime minister of the UK. On the other hand, the poem (in its two parts) might be described as a celebration of adolescence, a developmental stage in which the growing human being discovers and explores self, its wonders, its powers and its boundaries.

    But human society and its survival depends on the ability of enough people, above all our leaders, to move beyond that juvenile (and of course potentially delinquent) stage.

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