Pathways

Tonight I watched the second episode of the new TV series, Heroes. It's about ordinary people suddenly manifesting extraordinary talents; hang-ups and problems thereof; the problems of selfhood, personality, awareness, and adaptation.

I also found drawn to two poems. The first is by Robert Frost - it is his famous one about the road not taken:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

=====

That poem was published in 1916, ninety years and three generations ago. It has somehow become immortal, for we will always have to make decisions about roads and choices between them. And yet, there are older and sadder poems about roads too. Here is one which has proven less immortal, but which has a message just as poignant. It is Kipling's 1910 poem (yes, it is older than Frost's by six years), The Way Through The Woods:

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

=====

And of course, it is the blind travelling on a road now lost that is the saddest thing here. I haven't yet decided which poem I love more. Perhaps it will be just as difficult for you, my readers.

The Greater Trumps: (28) Judgement

The Trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, says that venerable Book of Books. Indeed, this image shows a sea of graves, a sea of waves, a crystal sea - and the dead rising. Above all things and to one side stands an angel, who looks suspiciously like the Fool of the first trump. For this is the Judgement, and at the vanishing point of perspective, in the hallowed and infinite distance, is a great throne, hidden in pure light.

It is not only the dead who rise, but the images of the past, of all hidden things being called forth to face the Judgement. This is no mere transformation from one state to another, but irrevocable change without continuity - an apocalypse, an apostrophe, perhaps a catastrophe or eucatastrophe. Not everyone wishes for Judgement; some have things to hide. But this image signals that the time for hiding is over, that all things are made plain, and old things are raised so that they will no longer have power. There is no more burden of the past, no more burden of the future, for all things are made present and presented.

Once you have negotiated the Judgement, you have made irrevocable Decision the focus of your action. Where Will and Power are one, so let it be, ask now no more.

=====

When I was young I most enjoyed the Apocalypse of St John, among all the books of the New Covenant. Now that I am older, I realise why that must have been so: it is a book written in symbolic language, easy to understand and accept when you are a child. But the truths it conceals or half-reveals are painful to adults and those who have lived enough to feel guilt, remorse, and antipathy towards things past.

Georg Handel's oratorio, The Messiah, is a truly great work. I remember listening to it live once; my father had decided to play matchmaker and asked me to invite a young lady. I remember she was very pleasant company, but that was our first and last date. Decision had struck again, and it was irrevocable. But one of the great arias of the last part of The Messiah remained with me. The Trumpet Shall Sound will always remain a favourite of mine for its clear and clarion call, evoking the destiny of those who believe.

The trumpet shall sound,
and the dead shall be raised incorruptible,
and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption,
and this mortal must put on immortality.

Whereas the image called Death signifies Change, and the image called Temperance signifies Alchemy, both are merely processes. The image of Judgement sounds the call to a pivotal moment, the dividing line between two states, beyond which return is impossible and no longer desired. Terminus est, the old language says.