Gentle Rage

[Steve Thorp]

We want our lives to be gentle

and wish, at the same time,

for the brutality of our destiny

 

Under shadowed canopies songs rose and stories were stumbled upon. The sun gave the festival a drowsy edge, the revolution was slow and smiling, almost as if we had found our new ways of living ordinary lives. Yet, as we read our stories, the thunder rolled and the sky darkened.

Our lovers should be tender,

yet ravish us with a scalding touch

 

This self desires, this self protects, this self controls. This self is in the sky and in the earth. This self fears and hopes and then considers wildness. The wild self is a playful, sensual self; the faery in us is nothing if not perilous. Yet we all need to eat; it is not just the flitting, darting soul that must be fed. 

We yearn for the caress of

summer winds,

and to be left as dead, 

torn by the teeth of winder storms.

 

When we rage, can we do it gently? The risk is that destruction becomes a habit, that civility is sneered upon. The old revolutions, where the means justify the ends, where the activist burns out, where rage simply alienates and builds the walls higher - these revolutions have failed. The paradox is that telling stories will not be enough, but someone has to tell it like it is, to see dead through to the molten core.

For I am a soft and simple bairn,

a callous wolf, a beast in the cradle,

a child in the woods,

the darkening flow of a drowning river,

a freezing glance

a gentle rage and a final sigh.

 

(Reflections on Uncivilisation Festival 2012 and for all Dark Mountaineers reblogged from http://psycho-bubble.tumblr.com. The poem is Gentle from editions 2, creative thorp, 2008

[Sky Hiatt]

Steve, I love your ability to say the deep things. 

[Steve Thorp]

Sky, not much to say but a humble thank you...