A scientific investigation into the poetic tempera

a scientific investigation into the poetic temperament.
He has arrived at life like a young man from the provinces coming, for
the first time to the city to make his fortune, full of hope and high
ideals.
But when the train slows to a halt and the passengers jostle and shove
their way towards the door his heart sinks for he sees only the sordid
and debased.
'Why can't I be blind to suffering and sing in full throated praise
like the birds? Why must I always want more? I am immature, cosseted
for too long in mother's arms. The world seems hostile and uncaring.
Don't abandon me, I can't stand the noise, I can't stand the dirt.
Comfort me, o! hold me tight. The sun has ceased to shine for
me.'
WRETCH!

In the savannah I hunted gazelle and wildebeest and lay, trying not to
breathe, on my stomach, cradling a rifle in my arms.
'This is not life. Life is torment, this is merely boring.'
Let me paint on the rocks and inside the caves, cryptic symbols and
depictions of long-extinct animals. Explain the dodo to me. O! Dodo,
you are my closest friend, the long beaked one whom I confide in.
Pelicans are no help at all. Too presumptuous, too conceited and the
albatross, too distant. I need the dodo for only the dodo will love me
unconditionally. Of course I have lived in caves and on mountain tops
and bathed naked, without shame, in the rivers which strew mercury
across the green and idle valley, like a child might fling a handful of
marbles in the air to express his jubilation.

The coronation of the crocodile was viewed by millions and the crowds
cheered with patriotic fervour as he, hand on heart, sung the first few
lines of our glorious, yet wholly reprehensible, national anthem. The
medals pinned to his breast remind us, inevitably, of his father. A
king yet also a servant. A servant to his country and to duty, as every
man must be.
Being a reptile he is agnostic and jeers at any metaphysical
speculation, though even reptiles have been known to weep in churches
or by roadside shrines, to light a candle and consider love's
inconstancy.
Remember the picnic we had? When, unable to find the forest and the
waterfall we stopped on the hard shoulder and ate our sausages and
sandwiches by the motorway which was itself a river, only noisier and
more frightening. Life doesn't make sense and now, neither can I.
Unable now to knot and twist and shape life into meaning. It simply
passes, and, like the wind I feel that it is cold but, beyond that, I
know nothing.
Terrifying void. Swallowed whole, and, for some reason, undigested in
the putrid gut of the earth where ulcers grow and pulsate. I, Jonah,
helpless and pitiful and without hope.

Where was that place in which I walked through orchards and was happy?
Did that place exist? Did I feel the sun slip its fingers down my shirt
and soothe my fitful heart? My fitful, unfaithful heart that tells only
filthy lies.
Asbestos. Falling rocks. Beggars. Thieves. Diseases. I can think of
nothing else. FUCK! never again can I allow that to happen. Delirious,
totally hysterical. Did you see me? The weakling with bulging eyes,
running back and forth like a penguin who has lost her eggs. WRETCH!
These tears are corrosive and leave scars on those hollow cheeks. FUCK!
what is it that makes you weak and timorous? as though you were still a
baby bird with soft, fluffy feathers and a pathetic look in your
eyes... WRETCH!

I have lifted and replaced the veil of things, of orange trees and
road-signs, so many times that I have begun to doubt that there was
ever a veil to be lifted. It was all a trick of the light or a spasm in
consciousness, a tic which points to madness.
O! ever sick one, ever pale, ever deathly. No wonder you made the moon
your goddess, pale and unreachable as she is. No wonder you sought
refuge in the mountains. not for their loftiness but for this- that no
one would perceive your wretchedness there, and for this, the air is
thin and you, disorientated and weakened, saw hallucinations that you
took eagerly for VISION!
BUT WHAT NOW?
'Reprimands and insults will do me no good. I cannot sculpt a poetry
from the block of my self-loathing. It would be like clubbing a seal to
death and giving the fur as a gift to one's wife. Beauty was not born
of violence but of LOVE!'
'Ha ha ha, he said love! the barefoot beggar boy all dressed in
tatters. He of the drooping lip and moist eye! Lover! That hope could
lay its head even in such a humble abode as this, that alone is cause
for mirth. Gentlemen! Applaud our beggar with the aching heart. His
high ideals and his refusal to be disillusioned.'
'Ah, but there's more at stake here. Sure, I don't know the rules yet
and I feel like a flightless bird, like an ostrich feebly beating its
stunted wings and wishing it could soar and swoop like all the others.
Or a saint who, having lived alone in a cave for 20 years, wakes up one
morning to find he no longer believes. O! wither flew those 20 years?
What self-mutilations have I undergone? What perversions of the
spirit?'
O! little broken one. How deeply you felt every wound. Even those which
were just grazes felt like red-hot pokers to the heart. No wonder you
retreated to nurse daydreams and cultivate orchids in the hothouse of
your head. O poor man. Irresolute wretch. Coward that you are. I pity
you, snail that tucks his head inside his shell and calls the darkness
'world.'

BUT WHAT NOW? There is a future but it is so vast and so terrifying.
There are no landmarks there. I am unable to find my way. What do I
have but a head full of words and a heart fit to burst with all this
longing? I have no secret spells, nor any other way to enchant this
outer world. Random, noisy, uncouth. Violent and indifferent. How am I
to make my peace with you? Will you let me continue writing? Please let
me write still. If there's any way of living and taking my poetry with
me then let me take that path. These words are all I have. I love them.
And if you can show me more then I will show you words to match the
splendour of that new and frightening vision, for words hover around me
like bees about a hive and without them I can serve no purpose. I have
nothing to give but as long as they remain I have something sweet and
satisfying for all palettes. I do not relish the thought of apocalypse.
I do not wait anxiously for the end but rather await the beginning
where everything exists as possibility and nothing else. possibility is
what will rouse the heart. Not faith and not sorrow and not joy. A
space which allows us room to act rather than to analyse and
conjecture. How long the road ahead! How much awaits us still! To waste
time lamenting the hardships we have already weathered is
self-defeating. We have time to make up. COME ON!