A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
Be we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so remarkably well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end has magnitude.
We must admit that there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in a tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

- Jack Gilbert

Italics mine, above.

I struggle with poetry that is religious, because I am not religious. I envy those that have faith. I wish I had access to that particular well, but I don't. And although that element is missing for me, the poem here still rings true, doesn't it?

I don't need to put my faith in a religion, or into the hands of a hard formulaic god, in order to believe in praising the beauty of simple things.

Our lives are made up of these simple things, these ordinary moments. And I fervently believe in paying attention, and in offering up appreciation for all of my moments - the dark and the light.

Who do I offer my appreciation to? The air, I guess. The sea. Directly to the source - the music itself, or the laughing friend. The Bengal tiger, the seaside town. I thank the things themselves, instead of an unseen creator pulling invisible strings.

Does it matter who I thank? To me, what matters is the noticing. The appreciating. The love.

Last night I walked my dog down a dark, silent street that's covered in ice, under a clear black sky lit with stars. My dog was jaunty, pouncing at nothing, her warm breath making little puffs over frozen snow mounds. It was a sad night. I was thinking of a friend of mine, who I knew to be suffering. I was thinking, then, of other friends, old and new. Lost and kept. Of their past sufferings, and my own, and all of our collective future ones, always hovering just over our heads. All the warm spots we each inhabit on this frozen, spinning planet, and the love that connects us to one another on our own dark nights.

I appreciate the connections. The beauty. The loss. My friend, and his heavy heart.

All of us.