IN THE HOUSE A WINDOW
In the house a window
In the window a pot
In the pot a twig
A drowsy woman is knitting booties
Inside her a fish swims without air
But she is content
She smiles as if to her own womb
At shouts in the street
At broken lights
At dark news from the bright box
The woman waits for the inevitable boy
A girl will do as well
-Aigerim Tazhi, (born 1981) Kazakhstan
Translated by J. Kates
“3100 Christians were killed and 2830 were kidnapped in Nigeria in 2024.” In India, “Four to five pastors or churches are attacked every day.” These are some statistics representing great suffering in parts of the world that aren’t in our daily headlines. The constant wars and episodes of violence, the dysfunctional families and societal breakdown that do make the headlines can’t begin to tell the story of each individual human life wracked with pain and heartache. No doubt all of us know, and many of us are, cases in point. Is it not crass, under the circumstances, to write about being happy? Should we feel guilty for even being happy?
The words of Jesus about tribulation had been floating around in my mind a lot recently: “In the world you will have tribulation,” and, “I have overcome the world.” Last Sunday as I was driving to church and actually bringing those thoughts into focus, as hard as I tried I could not remember the clause that comes between those two, which I have known most of my life. I stopped on the way to pick up a friend, and while I was waiting for her to come out to the car I looked up the verse on my phone. It turned out to be a convenient case of forgetfulness because when I went to the Bible app, of course it had several translations, which gave a broader meaning to Christ’s encouraging words.
Our Lord had just been telling his disciples about many disturbing things that would happen in the future, and then generalized saying, “In the world you will have tribulation….” And his next words are startling, really. The way I knew the next part is: “…but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.” Other translations are “take heart,” or “have courage, for I have overcome the world.”
The poem below is about being happy, about meaning, and writing. I’ve written before about how in the most creative, happy times of my life, which were while I was with child, I completely forgot about my diary or journal and never wrote a word in it. At other times, just living at a normal level of happiness, I often have written in a journal. My problem with journaling is exactly what G.K. Chesterton alluded to on at least two occasions saying,
“I am a bad reporter because everything seems to me worth reporting; and a bad reviewer because every sentence in every book suggests a separate essay,” and,
“Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.”
Did Chesterton ever keep a journal, I wonder? My guess is he didn’t, because writing about everything in a journal would leave him no time for gainful employment at writing in a more focused manner about many things.
I seem to have given up on my journal to a greater degree than ever before, because there is just too much that I want to put in it. If I wrote in my journal the way I want to, I would never be done. I sense this, every time I try, and I start scribbling madly, racing against time, knowing that it’s hopeless: I will never be able to do a proper job. Journaling demands to be neverending.
A book I borrowed briefly from the library some years ago told the story of the author’s obsession with journaling, and then her obsession with thinking about her obsession. She asked, How could she have a life, if she journaled about everything? She feared she was ceasing to really live, because she was writing instead. I didn’t read very far in it, because if journaling was stealing time from living, using my precious hours to read her book was even worse theft.
Blogging is not the same at all, in my case. I have to be somewhat focused when I write for others to read, and I must bring every post to an end, so I can publish it. For a process-oriented person like me, each post is a manageable goal, one which I can abandon and no one will care. In the meantime, I’m able to include some of the things I would have journaled about, without getting lost in my thoroughness.
I could put myself into this poem, and I would be talking to God. Because I do write a lot, the whole thing may not seem to pertain to my situation. But it did make me think, and it made me happy.
MISSED TIME
My notebook has remained blank for months
thanks to the light you shower
around me. I have no use
for my pen, which lies
languorously without grief.
Nothing is better than to live
a storyless life that needs
no writing for meaning —
when I am gone, let others say
they lost a happy man,
though no one can tell how happy I was.
-Ha Jin
A few years ago I posted a poem by Clive James, the title poem “Sentenced to Life,” from the collection written after he became ill, and he began to consider his life from the perspective of a dying man. When I opened that book again recently I immediately was taken by another reflective poem with similar themes.
Reportedly James maintained confidence to the end that there is no afterlife, but I suspect he was cured of that delusion as he was crossing over. He did realize and admit publicly that he had been a “bad husband” (by long infidelity) and he regretted it. In his poems he compares his years of strength, the exciting years of his life, with the last decade when he was facing death, and he judges the recent, shorter season to be the time during which he was restored to sanity by facing the truth about himself.
LANDFALL
Hard to believe, now, that I once was free
From pills in heaps, blood tests, X-rays and scans.
No pipes or tubes. At perfect liberty,
I stained my diary with travel plans.
The ticket paid for at the other end,
I packed a hold-all and went anywhere
They asked me. One on whom you could depend
To show up, I would cross the world by air
And come down neatly in some crowded hall.
I stood for a full hour to give my spiel.
Here, I might talk back to a nuisance call,
And that’s my flight of eloquence. Unreal:
But those years in the clear, how real were they,
When all the sirens in the signing queue
Who clutched their hearts at what I had to say
Were just dreams, even when the dream came true?
I called it health but never stopped to think
It might have been a kind of weightlessness,
That footloose feeling always on the brink
Of breakdown: the false freedom of excess.
Rarely at home in those days, I’m home now,
Where few will look at me with shining eyes.
Perhaps none ever did, and that was how
The fantasy of young strength that now dies
Expressed itself. The face that smiled at mine
Out of the looking glass was seeing things.
Today I am restored by my decline
And by the harsh awakening it brings.
I was born weak and always have been weak.
I came home and was taken into care.
A cot-case, but at long last I can speak:
I am here now, who was hardly even there.
-Clive James
FULL MOON
One night as Dick lay half asleep,
Into his drowsy eyes
A great still light began to creep
From out the silent skies.
It was the lovely moon’s, for when
He raised his dreamy head,
Her surge of silver filled the pane
And streamed across his bed.
So, for a while, each gazed at each —
Dick and the solemn moon —
Till, climbing slowly on her way,
She vanished, and was gone.
-Walter de la Mare
Gladsome Lights 