Socratic Questions…
~the lair of the beast~
Each day
hatches it’s own peculiar poison
and this one
comes dribbling down centuries.
Today
Is suitable for a few Socratic questions.
I have
learnt to live in the hallucinated
air of disbelief that
hovers around tragedy but
takes nothing away from it.
And
I have learnt to embrace
too much,
too readily.
For example,
that moment of fear
when a match won’t light
or a pot boils over,
when a door doesn’t budge
or a child sleeps too deep.
As lights come back on
or when the child stirs,
We scuff into habitual amnesia.
Without question.
Let’s say —
you try to penetrate the bedrock
in which fear lies imbedded.
And at last, if you do,
you find not the beast, nor
it’s lair, but a gargantuan mirror
full of your own red-faced self.
And what if you transcend this
self-preservation thing and for once,
just once, hurl yourself in
the face of a general or
a politician and say, Stop!
Would Darwin be terribly cross?
And if they listened, what then?
Would smashed up children
walk again and scorched orchards
bear almonds and apricots?
Only
the treachery of benevolence
or sleep
(you choose which)
only the treachery or
benevolence or sleep delivers
what should have been,
could be.
Meanwhile,
Let’s all look back and pray for
tomorrow’s fruit to ripen,
flower to bloom.
Meanwhile,
extolling infusions of star anise
and wrapped in black seaweed,
let’s all quite happily go,
we tinsel stars bleeding down
drainpipes of mortality.
Farida Haque
