In Guyana reciprocated animosity has not even come close to plumbing the awful depths which exist in so many other countries and, God willing, such hideous animosity never will prevail. But the endless political and racial suspicions and outspoken antagonisms, the endless jockeying for position in purely partisan causes, the endless threats of trouble to come, the endless refusals to compromise, the continual putting of party before country, the ingrained and knee-jerk demonstrations of incivility in the dialogue between the principal parties – all this is immeasurably frustrating, morale-depressing and wearying. One yearns for an end to it, one yearns for a large patriotism to include all of us, one yearns for an uplifting sense of greater vision, one yearns for mutual civility, one yearns for peace. And I read Yehuda Amichai’s poem and I know what he means.
I, MAY I REST IN PEACE
I, may I rest in peace – I, who am still living, say,
May I have peace in the rest of my life?
I want peace right now while I’m still alive.
I don’t want to wait like that pious man who wished for one leg
of the golden chair of Paradise, I want a four-legged chair
right here, a plain wooden chair. I want the rest of my peace now.
I have lived out my life in wars of every kind: battles without
and within, close combat, face-to-face, the faces always
my own, my lover-face, my enemy face.
Wars with the old weapons – sticks and stones, blunt axe, words,
dull ripping knife, love and hate,
and wars with newfangled weapons – machine gun, missile,
words, land mines exploding, love and hate.
I don’t want to fulfill my parents’ prophecy that life is war.
I want peace with all my body and all my soul.
Rest me in peace.
As I get older, and the older I get the faster I seem to get older, I find myself regretting all the wonders and miraculous developments I will miss as time goes on beyond my passing. Every day brings a series of reports on something new in the world, some prospect promising extraordinary, fresh insights into how the universe works and how man will master all he surveys. A recent Scientific American has a series of fascinating articles on “12 events that will change everything” – for example, synthetic life, self-aware machines, the discovery of alien intelligence, extra dimensions, fusion energy and polar meltdown. I find myself yearning to be there still when all this happens.
And then I read the Portuguese poet Affonso Romano DeSant’ Anna’s poem and get things into a rather different perspective. We are always there right now.
LETTER TO THE DEAD
Friends, nothing has changed
in essence.
Wages don’t cover expenses,
wars persist without end,
and there are new and terrible viruses
beyond the advances of medicine.
From time to time, a neighbour
falls dead over questions of love.
There are interesting films, it is true,
and, as always, voluptuous women
seducing us with their mouths and legs,
but in matters of love
we haven’t invented a single position that’s new.
Some astronauts stay in space
six months or more, testing
equipment and solitude.
In each Olympics new records are predicted
and in the countries social advances and setbacks.
But not a single bird has changed its song
with the times.
We put on the same Greek tragedies,
reread “Don Quixote,” and spring
arrives on time each year.
Some habits, rivers, and forests are lost.
Nobody sits in front of his house anymore
or takes in the breezes of afternoon,
but we have amazing computers
that keep us from thinking.
On the disappearance of the dinosaurs
and the formation of galaxies
we have no new knowledge.
Clothes come and go with the fashions.
Strong governments fall, others rise,
countries are divided,
and the ants and the bees continue
faithful to their work.
Nothing has changed in essence.
We sing congratulations at parties,
argue football on street corners,
die in senseless disasters,
and from time to time
one of us looks at the star-filled sky
with the same amazement we had
when we looked on in caves.
And each generation, full of itself,
Continues to think
that it lives at the summit of history.