Resilience

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

As regular readers know, I am working my way through my printed collections - from latest to earliest - while compiling e-editions that will contain revised versions of all those poems that have since been revised (and already appear on the blogs); having been asked by readers to add some poems missing from the blogs, here is another, the last from 'Tracking the Torchbearer' (2012). I will soon start working on 'On the Battlefields of Love' (2010). I am very unwell at the moment, but will try to continue writing up posts, and the occasional new poem, as often as possible. 

I am delighted that feedback suggests some of you are already exploring my poetry archives, as listed on the right of blog entries.

Meanwhile...

Never, but never underestimate the power of the human spirit. While I do not subscribe to any religion, therein lies a spirituality to which most if not all of us can easily relate, whatever our socio-cultural-religious background. 

Several readers who have only just recently started dipping into my poetry blogs suggest that I am being hypocritical when I refer to a sense of spirituality in blog posts/ poems. Hopefully, this villanelle will help to put the record straight for him; regular readers over the past ten years will, of course, already know where I stand on the issue.

RESILIENCE

Life and Death in a combat zone

for the lives of thirty-three men;

it was a passion for life that won

Hope and love moving things on

(against all odds, sure to win?);

Life and Death in a combat zone

Despair, the centuries-old demon

sure to stake a claim of its own;

it was a passion for life that won

Love, insisting we are not alone

in a womb-tomb of imagination;

Life and Death in a combat zone

Dark thoughts, dragging us down,

reminding us we’re only human;

it was a passion for life that won

Victory! The light of a new dawn

signalling survival like a beacon;

Life and Death in a combat zone;

it was a passion for life that won

Copyright R. N. Taber 2010

[Note: Written to celebrate the resilience of thirty-three miners in Chile trapped 700 metres underground for 69 days and rescued in October 2010.]