The Moment
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
I just returned from my 2 week trip to Sawtooths/Yellowstone/Tetons/Oregon/Idaho and finished reading Handmaid's Tale. It inspired me to start taking a closer look at Atwood's poetry. I really closely associate with the way she thinks. It feels so much like what I love about Dickinson and Browning...women with a sense of mischievous and yet somehow forbidden thought! And yet, not forbidden, really at all.
ReplyDeleteThis concept plays into one I have mentioned before- the idea behind being "Krishna's flute"...a higher power being played through us, and us, just the vehicle looking back at this Divine...I suppose, the idea of a holy spirit too! And yet, we claim the experience as our own. Another dystopia within...our own Truman Show.
I agree!
ReplyDeleteI've tried to explain to people that everything was stolen at one time or sometime. Animals are territorial, and that must be the start of property and ownership. She over looks conquering. That is the real claim to possessions
I have never truly thought about possession starting with the animals. It is literally encoded in DNA response. To possess territory is to possess power, resources, females, young and a blood line. Humans just take that concept and throw it against the wall, beat it a few times, and then hang it on the wall with all of the other chaos we have collected to call "ours". Around these holiday seasons it is so interesting to look a possession of possessions. One one hand these items represent the lives we live and the memories we create. We embed so much energy into a certain few possessions and very little into the majority of what we own, or at least I do! We need so little and yet have so much.
ReplyDeleteAre we ready to start Alias Grace?
ReplyDeleteI started it! But I'm only 15-20 pages in, let's.
DeleteI started reading Bhagavad Gita. Have you read that? It's really cool. I'm about a third into it and I'm reading two translations, but I might start a third by a translator I really like, Stephen Mitchell. He wrote a excellent Gilgamesh translation.
Awesome! I fly back to Honolulu tomorrow, so will start Alias Grace then.
ReplyDeleteOh man- are you starting to open the can of Eastern philosophical poetry?! I’m in!!! The Bhagavad Gita was one of the recommended yoga texts for the training I took last year. Wonderfully epic poem that is probably one of the most translated texts in history with as much commentary. A lot of yogis believe that all world religion and philosophy could be contained in that one text along. It’s truly one of the greats with a lot of symbolism that I would highly recommend looking up anytime you come across something curious. It would be great to post sections of the poem on here, or do one month of the whole poem. I have heard one of the most read translations is Stephen Mitchell and one of my yoga teachers, who is Indian himself, likes the Eknath Easwarn translation best. I think the one I have is by Barbara Stoler Miller, but I will check. So cool....