Through to the future
by Bob on March 13, 2007
A beautiful person re-kindled my interest in the British poet, James Elroy Flecker. I can't help but share this poem. It would seem to be able to be dedicated especially to those who are known out in the aether alone in our technological time and day and hyperspace. Especially the last stanza.
Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.
Flecker knew our age and technology before its time. So wise people frequently travel through time and space, like a Central Asian shaman on his journey, without any care as to whether either time or space exist. Perhaps they actually don't. One ponders the Human Condition yet again. And perhaps fragile models of the universe.
* * *
"TO A POET A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE"
I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.
I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.
But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?
How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Maeonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.
O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.
Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.
-- By James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915).