One Small
Missive To A Friend
Too much sadness; far too much sorrow - from the knowing, the feeling,
of my mistakes; from the knowing - the feeling - of having caused so
much suffering. So I listen to the Aria from Bach's BWV 82 and I
am overwhelmed. Tears of sadness, beauty, suffering, knowing: overcome
with too little and yet too much: so much suffering for so little
apprehension gained. So much suffering before, century upon century,
for so little change, and I am left remembering as I was this morning
under warming late August Sun when I wandered among the meadow-fields
to sit myself upon dew-covered grass and close my eyes while the
sun-warmth of an English Summer brought one small moment of an almost
tragic respite.
No faith to redeem; no prayer to ease if only for a while the hurting
burden of remorse. No allegory of hope to grasp and hold in needful
arms which reach out to only the emptiness of this room, only the
emptiness of that field where a Buzzard flew to shade me so briefly
perhaps so fittingly from Sun. Yet - and yet - there is an intimation;
one intimation, one reaching out beyond God, deity, toward a new
burgeoning supra-personal love that I
cannot quite grasp. Elusive, as the haunting dreams of night only
partially remembered when we, sleepfull still, awake to hope that we
can at least begin to hope, again.
One intimation of one needfull wordless love born from such a temporal
knowing as breaks me down to one connexion upon one Earth; one
transient form, fleeting between life, sorrow, death. Thus is there
that deepfull needfull knowing of how I am cloud, dew, seed, soil and
Sun; of how the years have worn me down to be only what I am: as the
small golden Beetle crawled upwards upon that one stalk of
breeze-swayed grass to be in that moment of my morning one connexion
undefined undefinable of and to one unknown Cosmic Being breaking through
while I sat in silence, observing as I the almost-broken did observe
then in one pure undefiled moment of almost peace and purity of an
undirected unrequited love...
And so the music and memory end, to leave this, only this; only such
feeble words as these as burgeons forth again that yearning to be only
and ever alone in such silence and solitude as may keep me mindful,
hopeful, unable to cause or seek to cause ever again any suffering and
able thus to feel again one more such moment of that elusive
blissful-sadness.
Thus
there is no longer any need nor desire in me to be, by others,
understood...
DW Myatt