Geriatric
by R S Thomas
What god is proud
of this garden
of dead flowers, this underwater
grotto of humanity,
where limbs wave in invisible
currents, faces drooping
on dry stalks, voices clawing
in a last desperate effort
to retain hold? Despite withered
petals, I recognise
the species: Charcot, Meniere,
Alzheimer. There are no gardeners
here, caretakers only
of reason overgrown
by confusion. This body once,
when it was in bud,
opened to love's kisses. These eyes,
cloudy with rheum,
were clear pebbles that love's rivulet
hurried over. Is this
the best Rabbi Ben Ezra
promised? I come away
comforting myself, as I can,
that there is another
garden, all dew and fragrance,
and that these are the brambles
about it we are caught in,
a sacrifice prepared
by a torn god to a love fiercer
than we can understand.
Lent. A time of reflection, repentance, ascetic self-questioning, self-denial. Reflection as examination of our lives in the light of God; repentance as that motivational impulse towards change in the light of that examination; self-questioning about what matters most, and why what matters most is not always what we attend to most carefully; self-denial, the refusal of the will to go with the moral default settings of self-interest, self-indulgence, self-service.
But sometimes Lent can be something else. Instead of humility and penitence their can be for want of a better word defiance, and defiance articulated in questioning the One who so closely knows, examines and judges us. Giving up our comfortable views of God for Lent! It is that reverent defiance that gives this poem its power to both move us and scare us. Lent is a good time for thinking again of the God we believe in, whose mercy we depend upon, whose love we trust, whose providence and purpose we look for in the contingencies and circumstances of our own living. This poem is about a human being growing old, and the onset of Alzheimer's, the slow relinquishing of the self, and the poet's angry interrogation of any god overseeing with any sense of contentment let alone pride, a garden with flowers wilting, wasting, decomposing into nothingness.
But once again in a single poem Thomas argues for and with a faith that struggles to try and have it both ways. The god of this slowly decomposing garden of human life is questioned and resisted until the poet sees beyond all the withered, dying beauty. But what he sees is not the fantasy that would ever claim that in growing old "the best is yet to be". Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra is a mockery for the reality that is many people's old age. Instead Thomas sees the torn god whose sacrifice makes possible another garden of dew and fragrance, wrested into existence by "a love fiercer than we can understand."
Thomas has no faith or patience in explanations and comforting cliches; he settles for a sterner reality, in which the brambles that catch and tear are real enough, but they are not the final reality and destiny of this body so loved and loveable in its budding promise when young. The tenderness with which Thomas describes the love that enlivens and sparkles each person with humanity, also describes the fiercer love that is torn in order to redeem, renew and make flower again the garden of creation. There is much of Genesis 1-3 in this poem which, while giving full weight to the theology of fallenness and mortality, moves beyond to a hopefulness which is not wistful or hesitant, and which against all apearances to the contrary, trusts this fiercer love which we cannot understand to renew the garden of God's own creation.
This is a remarkable poem about growing old, and the diminishing of the self that attends many whose mind begins to lose its grasp as "reason is overgrown by confusion". The balance of unvarnished realism and reasoned tenderness, create a tension between hope and despair, which if not entirely resolved, nevertheless tilts towards newness, which if not inexorably promised, is neither inexorably withheld.
Geriatric
by R S Thomas
What god is proud
of this garden
of dead flowers, this underwater
grotto of humanity,
where limbs wave in invisible
currents, faces drooping
on dry stalks, voices clawing
in a last desperate effort
to retain hold? Despite withered
petals, I recognise
the species: Charcot, Meniere,
Alzheimer. There are no gardeners
here, caretakers only
of reason overgrown
by confusion. This body once,
when it was in bud,
opened to love's kisses. These eyes,
cloudy with rheum,
were clear pebbles that love's rivulet
hurried over. Is this
the best Rabbi Ben Ezra
promised? I come away
comforting myself, as I can,
that there is another
garden, all dew and fragrance,
and that these are the brambles
about it we are caught in,
a sacrifice prepared
by a torn god to a love fiercer
than we can understand.
Thank you for this poem (unknown to me, though I have collections of RST's poems and love them), also for your insightful commentary.
Posted by: J A Ellis | June 26, 2024 at 05:11 PM