Skip to main content

LILACS BLOOMING

The news today could not be much grimmer, or more sad, without being fully tragic - a brilliant, charismatic, well-spoken and driven leader of a country facing a major crisis gone suddenly from public life - not Lincoln, or Kennedy, but Johnson. And not dead yet, to be British about it.

But my how this hurts. Since the bombshell news last night that the PM - Boris - had been admitted to the ICU - much of the world has been stunned. I felt as if my father had died; it was a gut-punch, and winded, I fought back tears. I feel shaken to the core.

Why? Because Johnson, along with the Queen, is the symbol of our nation, of Great Britain, now, in its hour of peril. He has been our robust, funny, energetic, boyish, mischievous, literate captain. He lives on, but it is a grim moment. If he can be felled, who cannot be? Who is safe? No one.

This virus unscrews the doors. Let's be frank. 50% of men over 50 who go into the ICU in the UK for Covid-19 and go onto ventilators, die, within 5-10 days. 50% survive. No one wants odds like that. The reality facing his family, fiancée, friends, and the nation, is that we may very well see one of our most dazzling political figures since Churchill die too soon.

I don't like seeking for pleasing things in tragic moments, but it is the case that should the worst happen, Boris will at least be emblazoned on the British mind like few other heroes since Nelson; a fate he would enjoy, though not this way won. His name will ring out for centuries, the true Brit. His bravery and refusal to stop working, killed him - like Bethune in China, he waded into the storm, and was overcome.

Here we should halt - rhetoric is too greedy for carrion. Love must temper poetic flow with kinder thoughts. It is too soon for eulogies, elegies, or obituaries. I am desperately hoping Boris is saved by the best doctors the UK has. His death would be too horrible and demoralising for us to easily bear. Only the Queen's would hit harder. History like a terrible scythe is over us now, casting a shadow no living figure needs. More light, let the lilacs bloom. We can only hope this Easter sees the great man rise.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
3 comments
Read more

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...
15 comments
Read more

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".
1 comment
Read more