Reaction to a Poem.

I looked at this poem, read through it once. And recoiled away. Ran, literally. Jumped the pages to another.

It is not a bad poem. It is great English, but it is something within it. The graphical sense of torture portrayed.

I have not watched, and do not plan to watch the film ‘The Passion of Christ’. When I read something well written, the mood curls around me in an invisible envelope. So it is with poetry. It affects me, my mood, my perception of life.

Reading Winfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et decorum et’, I never fail to be gripped, held by the imagery, the poetry, the living entity of that recollection. I am caught up in his nightmare. I live it with him.

Yet, I have read that poem at least 30 times, and will read it again. Because it is simply very good.

When I read this poem, and recoiled away from it, I turned the pages to ‘Dulce et decorum’. I psyched myself to read it again. Immediately I was immersed in the dream. Again. And when I came up, gasping for the pure fresh air, I shivered and thought; there’s too much pain in my life, for me to write of it lightly.

It became a poem, here.

Too Much Pain

There’s too much pain-

day to day as seen,

in my life real;

too much seen

of man ill and cold,

for me to write of pain lightly;

not a joke, not even stale-

a living pulsing nightmare

that touches my world too often

to think of pain in abstract,

a dream I fear to venture in.

There’s too much pain in my world,

though I may not of now feel it;

but I hurt, I cringe, I pain-

with the pulse of hurt

flowing through my people.

there’s too much pain in my world

for me to write lightly of pain,

its myriad cruelties and hates;

there’s too much pain in my world…

©GayUganda 20 Nov. 07