Sunday 5 July 2020

"I"

 
      We live in a critical era, a crossroads, a turning point. A world where we fall under the shadow of the opinion forming, desire creating, mass media, while struggling to find something more personal, more us. There is another world on the horizon, but it is difficult to see it clearly. The danger of course is we become an all important "I", forsaking the other, with equally disastrous results.
     This short poem is by Adrienne Rich, from her book Dark Fields of The Republic. In it she alludes to the folly and dangers of the world of "I", and how simple it would be to enter that world.

In Those Years.

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of us, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and, yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood saying I

Adrienne Rich. Dark Fields Of The Republic.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

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