POETRY OF THE SOUL III

                INSPIRATIONAL WORDS -v- UNINSPIRED ACTIONS
                                                             By
                                                  John G. Sutton

In this often-difficult material world there are many consolations along the hard road that we call life. One such is the pleasure and insight we glean from poetry and prose. Reading the works of poets that have created inspirational verse should inspire us, fill us with determination to do the right thing. The question is, does it do so? I was recently in the little Lancashire village of Rishton, near Blackburn, where I met a lady poet who gave me two of her books of verse and philosophical prose. Reading Mrs Mackey's books reminded me of the power that poetry has to touch our souls and inspire us. As I read the following poem I thought of the terrible plight of those poor people trapped by the floods in Mozambique: 'CAN I HELP By Brenda Mackey: Help me for I have no home / Help me for I have no water / Help me for I am ill / Help me or someone will kill me / So many calls for help / We feel we cannot help them all / So often we turn our backs / But if each one of us / Takes on a single cause / Which seems easier to deal with / Gradually there would be an easing off / Of all these needs / There are more that has than hasn't / Let each person share a bit / Will it make a difference? / Well let's just try with one. '

Inspirational verse often is itself inspired and Mrs Mackey told me that she received the words she wrote from a source beyond this physical plane. Poets throughout the ages have written of their muse, or personal inspiration. The Muse's were the mythological Greek goddesses, the daughters of Zeus, said to create the genius of poetry and art within the gifted few. Calliope was the goddess of epic poetry, such as Homer's Odyssey in which the pre-Christian poet wrote: 'I would rather be tied to the soil as another man's serf, even a poor man's, who hadn't much to live on himself, than be King of all these dead and destroyed'. Those lines were surely known by England's former poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson when he echoed them in his poem Ulysses: 'It little profits that an idle king / By this still heath, among these barren crags / Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole / Unequal laws unto a savage race / That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.' The message being that we can not simply take from others to glorify ourselves, we must, as Tennyson's poem says be 'strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield'.

The inspirational verses of the world's poets, explaining that glorification in the material world is effectively meaningless in the eye of time, are however often ignored. In the UK our government recently saw fit to spend over a hundred million pounds on something they euphemistically call 'The Millennium Dome' which is, in effect, a big ugly umbrella. We, as a nation, were expected to reflect in the pseudo glory of this temporary monument to mismanagement that cost us, on average £2 each. Yet when thousands of people were hit by a major environmental disaster in Mozambique the same government, our government, initially offered just two million pounds in aid. It took the British public, you and I, to respond to the call for help, to get really meaningful aid packages in to those in desperate need. The awful images seen on our TV news programmes, of that flooded far away land, with men, women and children struggling for their lives inspired many of us into action. It seems to take a major tragedy, such as the floods of Mozambique, to bring home the need to put into effect the words 'Love thy neighbour as thyself'. Inspired words, but their message is lost on the horrifying 'Neighbours From Hell' whose uninspired actions reflect the very worst in our greedy materialistic world.

Anyone who has seen the exploitative TV documentaries about neighbours that are determined to injure and hurt each other, must surely be appalled. Yet, in many small ways, in our daily personal interactions, we too may hurt our neighbours, friends and relations. We might not hurl bricks at their windows, or shout names at them in the street, but there are more subtle ways to destroy people. In one of Mrs Mackey's books she writes: 'Be tolerant at all times. To receive love one has to give and show love. It may take time but love will return and you will feel blessed.' That is a truth that most of us will recognise yet we often fail to put it into action. And the failure to positively act to promote good neighbourliness and understanding is frequently as cruel as more physical action. As Oscar Wilde wrote 'Some do it with a bitter look / Some with a flattering word / The coward does it with a kiss / The brave man with a sword.'

The former Poet laureate John Betjeman was a master at satirising in verse the ridiculousness of English middle class manners. This is from 'How to Get On in Society': 'Phone for the fish knives, Norman / As Cook is a little unnerved / You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes / And I must have things daintily served.' That seems innocent enough, until you consider that the manners, affected behaviour and language of a certain social class are designed to alienate and identify those who do not belong to it. 'Some do it with a bitter look'. How hurtful to be excluded from the association of others because one doesn't know all about fish knives, or drive the 'right' car or speak with the 'correct' inflection. There is little love lost on neighbours who, by chance or misfortune, stray into 'foreign' territory. As an example I think of the 1960's Football Pools winner Viv Nicholson of 'Spend, Spend, Spend!' fame. When she and her working class husband moved on to a modern 'middle class' housing estate they were, effectively, ostracised by the neighbours. No bricks through the window, but hell all the same. Why would people do this? I believe the answer is to maintain their own personal, misguided sense of superiority.

Poets and philosophers throughout the ages have written on the theme that is best expressed in the Bible in St Mark Ch.8 Verse 36 'For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' By insisting on our personal importance and reinforcing our individual self-image with material possessions we are ignoring that message. As Brenda Mackey says in her poem 'Love and Hate: Love is beautiful and caring / It heals, restores friendships / It makes people want to share what they have.' I agree with those sentiments, after all, who really wants to be Rex Mundi; King of the material world, when all around are dead and destroyed?

You can order a book of poetry from Brenda Mackey by sending a cheque or postal order for £2.50p to Mrs B. Mackey, 52 Station Road, Rishton, Blackburn BB1 4HF

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