Beyond Belief

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

An earlier version of today’s poem first appeared in an anthology, Echoes of War, Poetry Now (Forward Press) 2003 and subsequently in my collection the following year.

Now, regular readers will be aware that have revised some poems since they first appeared in my collections and on my blogs. Some readers say they prefer the original version, but most prefer the revised version. All ask why I posted/published the original version if it was likely to be revised later. Well, at the time I wrote it, I saw it as a complete poem not the genesis for another. Years on, I read some of my earlier poems and can see where they fail, to one degree or another, either because they don’t say quite sat what I meant to say or don’t say it at all.

Once I get back inside a poem, I can see where the cracks need filling, not merely papered over. Writing a poem from the outside working inwards is very different to writing from the inside and working outwards.  Yes, the original is written from within the poet, but he or she only created the poem head and heart have shaped; the poem itself, as a developing organism,  needs to have say in that development.

Creating a poem is one thing and, yes, sometimes it is enough, but not always; any further development will comes late so long as the writer leaves room in the poem for that, and I always do. Moreover, I have always had a sense of this with my poems so always kept in mind that I would need to publish new editions of my collections at some point to allow for and include revisions/developments in some poems.  [Revisions that appear on my blogs will appear in new editions after 2015.]

From time to time, someone gets in touch to say he or she enjoyed both an original and revised revision of a poem, but especially enjoyed comparing the two.  One reader wrote to say they found it ‘intriguing’ to look inside my head and see how an original version of a poem led into the later version.  

While I dare say critics will see some of my poems as failures (they may well be right) I see them as relating to the person/poet I was at the time I wrote them. Hopefully, I have changed with passing time (hopefully for the better); similarly, my poetry. Readers are welcome to form their own opinion. Whatever, having written something, it make sense to share it, surely? So I have published my collections since 2001 and feedback, plus the changing nature of my own personal space. will result in new editions after the publication of a final collection - Diary of a Time Traveller in 2015 - when I hit 70.

Now, there is more than one take on aspiration, and somewhere along the line we have to make choices; sometimes it may seem as if the choice is whether or not we are prepared to let someone else make that choice for us. But isn’t that just passing the buck?

Whatever, few things on this earth are anywhere near as simple as we try to make them appear, certainly not that complex network of communications, missed communications,  mixed messages and calls for commitment that comprise the human mind.

BEYOND BELIEF

Some say he sought freedom,

preferring martyrdom to repression;

others point to sentiments

expressed pertaining to the zeal

of a fundamentalist

waging war against the world

armed with Holy Word

Some say he followed a star,

near blinded by its glorious light;

others call him a Messiah

come in peace with a fire in his belly

no one could extinguish,

a measure of anguish fuelling

growing desperation

Some say, he was brainwashed

as a child, taught how the finest ends

justify appalling means,

suicide as a political statement

absolving conscience

from the agony heaped on body bags

at a roadside

Some call him a Dark Angel

that did not know him as well as she

who knew his fears,

saw tears fall, final choices made,

sent alone, small and scared

to brave The Word, bomb the world,

no one spared

Ashes, poor apology for a sorry world

and its every word

Copyright R. N. Taber 2003; 2012

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books 2004.]