For Inge Friedman
Father Martin said, “Are you happy Adam?”
“I have health, a job I enjoy, enough food, comfort, occasional luxuries if I
feel the need of them, my poetry. Given the state of three-quarters of the
world’s poor, wouldn’t you say that unhappiness would be a perverse indulgence?”
P. D. James, Death in Holy Orders
So there it is; I—indulgent pervert—
Have all the assets Adam had in both
Eden and London. Yet, fully alert
To sparkling privilege, find myself loath
To smile at fortune’s gifts—cannot evade
The guilt of ineffectuality
Crawling from untrammeled sludge that pervades,
Sickens, and defines Earth’s realities.
My Muse is Melancholy. Though I know
What should, what must be done to save a world
Infested by those seven sins, no hope
Dispels my fear, nor forms new, glowing pearls.
Ninety-one year old Inge, with more life
Than an exploding star, explained it all:
“If you hate this bleak world and all its strife
Then you must hate yourself, become a thrall
To your own despair, take mis’ry to wife
Resigned to lubricate each meal with gall.”
She speaks cold truth. Although I do not hate
Myself, I can’t evacuate the scorn
My helplessness provokes, cannot elate
My bitter life; cannot provoke the dawn.
(9/28/10)