Saturday, December 27, 2008

The Reassurance

Here's a poem which was sent to me today by an actor whom I've never met, but who has done a lot of work through the agency that I work for - sometimes we need extra actors and he's always done an excellent job for us. He's called David and had been reading my posts about the Communist's death. Thank you, David.

This poem's by Thom Gunn, whose work I know only very slightly, but I really like this. I'd love to be able to believe in life after death and yet I don't seem to be able to: and this poem really sums up that feeling.

Events that some people would take as proof of an afterlife, doubting Daphne just takes as proof that my mind is making "itself secure" and so are other people's too. I do try to keep an open mind: but I've yet to come across anything that will convince me. Though I'd like to, of course!

The Reassurance
About ten days or so
After we saw you dead
You came back in a dream.
I'm all right now you said
And it was you, although
You were fleshed out again:
You hugged us all round then,
And gave your welcoming beam.
How like you to be kind,
Seeking to reassure.
And, yes, how like my mind
To make itself secure.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great poem with much resonance for me too. Thanks for sharing it.

However, I wish some of the things my mind has done to make itself secure were only in a dream and not so annoying!

PS 'Doubting Daphne' - love it!

9:36 am  
Blogger rhymeswithplague said...

It's okay to be a doubter. The Lord loves to reveal himself to doubters like Thomas. It's all there in the New Testament.

2:49 pm  
Blogger Oliver A. FP said...

Rhymeswithplague - If you're being serious, how disrespectful a comment is that to leave when she's talking about an atheist who is dead?

Atheism was so important to him. He was a good, fair man and couldn't bear the cruelty that has been inflicted, and is still being inflicted, in the name of religion. You might not agree with his answer to that conundrum, but still... not the place.

11:03 pm  
Blogger Oliver A. FP said...

And, more on-topic, that poem just made me cry.

11:04 pm  

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