Friday, 11 April 2014

Josephine Miles: The Sympathizers


.

Old man, India: photo by Glenn Losack MD, 17 December 2011


To this man, to his boned shoulders
Came the descent of pain.
All kinds,
Cruel, blind, dear, horrid, hallowed,
Rained, again, again.

To this small white blind boned face,
Wherever it was,
Descended
The blows of pain, it took as it were blinded,
As it were made for this.

We were there. We uneasy
Did not know if it were.
Knew neither
The reason nor the man nor whether
To share, or to beware.



 Josephine Miles (1911-1985): The Sympathizers, from Local Measures, 1946
at

8 comments:

  1. TC11 April 2014 at 10:57

    Josephine Miles has been here with us before.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mose2311 April 2014 at 11:08

    To share, or to beware

    This seems to me a great summation of the ethical demand the photo presents.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TC11 April 2014 at 11:37

    Thanks, WB. And yes certainly, about the photo. Not of course to imply that the poet, who had a hard time getting around at all, was off to India, or writing about that. More a matter of the universality of the problem, and in particular of the immediate physical prospect, of human suffering. Miles did have considerable knowledge of that. Since the age of two she had been in and out of various difficult circumstances prescribed for her crippling rheumatoid arthritis.

    The sad fact that the presence of the suffering of others often causes discomfort to those nearby (upon which, WB, I think we've remarked in earlier conversations) certainly underlies that hard, but honest concluding line.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mose2311 April 2014 at 14:32

    I guess you'd have had to taste something of suffering to come to that kind of honesty.

    So much cultural production seems driven by the studied refusal of discomfort.

    ReplyDelete
  5. TC11 April 2014 at 14:57

    Oh absolutely, a studied refusal. And in this world, it's also necessary to have a nice pair of blinders to block out the visible evidences of misery in every urban milieu. Doesn't Google manufacture those? (The special de luxe Google employee commute buses have darkened windows, naturally.)

    It's after all a foundational tenet of the global conquering force of the born-this-morning "Millennials": Forget honesty, antiseptic Happyface über alles, a Lambo before I'm 22 or it's the bridge jump. (With lifejacket, of course.)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dalriada12 April 2014 at 04:53

    From 'Millenium Dust'

    PERPETUAL LIFE
    The sun disappears behind hills,
    a white light still remains.
    No pink or red or orange
    with tight purple streaks,

    through a white cloud.

    I suddenly feel
    we can never be destroyed,
    but I know otherwise.
    It's only a daydream
    an overwhelming breeze
    a constriction that I can't see
    opening up in the heart
    on a warm evening.

    JC

    ReplyDelete
  7. TC12 April 2014 at 06:20

    Colin,

    Thanks for that swell Joe Ceravolo poem -- a lingering memory of yesterday's...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nin Andrews12 April 2014 at 13:35

    Heart-breaking. No glasses can keep you from seeing it.

    ReplyDelete