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Re: Child of Reason
Hi Alan
I have taken a little time to get back to you about this beautiful reflection. Thank you.
I find the piece paradoxical, because it seems to refute reason and yet is reasoning in its form of communication. It seems to be saying that the way in which we are made to be reasoning beings brings with it the price of losing that which is light, rich, connecting and insightful (the being). And yet we can only know these things through certain forms of reasoning – meaning recognising, piecing together, weighing up value, reaching understanding... By “rational pursuit” are you meaning the oppression of other impulses, not so rational but that are better guides/unfolding substances in our journeys? The poem leaves me saddened, seeing a child held back and down on a lonely road, all natural impulses willing it to something but there being nothing for it to be embraced by that feels like deep “m-other”.
Can you open up why this poem, and why now?
It feels like a lament for our discourses.
As if you see such a lost child in there somewhere...
I am happy to make the leaps myself and openly here – I also know the value of creating the lily pads for companion frogs to leap between and I do not want to respond to you with demands for explanation. What you have written feels like a bridge built on a sigh.
Love
Susie

On 19/2/07 6:57 PM, "A.D.M.Rayner" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear All,
 
For your possible reflection.
 
 
Warmest
 
Alan
 
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Child of Reason

I feel I cannot think

Of My Self alone

As wise

For there can be no wise One alone

I am not wise

I am a child of suffering

Whose childful yearning

Is to lighten the load

Imposed by those who goad

Us on our way

By means of fearful refutation

Of all that they might seek to find

I cannot grow up

For in that adulteration

I encounter devastating poverty

A desertion of the spirit

That pools us all together

In the recreative communion

Of our natural neighbourhood

Can our rational pursuit

Serve any better purpose

Than to chase what we seek

Further

And further

and further

Away?

If we were only to loosen

Those unforgiving means and ends

The hardline limits of denial

By which we close down on our prey

We could release the life that loves

Our child’s play