Blake

I have been reading Blake for many years now. When I feel like cheering myself up, when I want to know that sane people have existed in other times, I read him. All winter my idea of a good Sunday was that I wouldn’t open my wallet or take out my car key and that I would drink tea in front of the fire reading poetry aloud. I spent several of those Sundays re-reading The Four Zoas, my favorite of Blake’s long poems. It is wild and unorganized. He was just putting his myth together.

Someone said to me once that if William Blake were alive today he’d be horrified, turning in his grave. I think he would have felt right at home. Things are just as he said they were. “Any man defending the bible in this year of Our Lord 1787 is in danger of his life.” Mayber a bumper sticker that reads Flag Pins for Pinheads, or, Pinheads for Flag Pins would be fun. But I suppose that would run the risk of inciting road rage. Is america really worth getting beaten to death over? 40 years ago the answer to that question was , ‘Yes.’ I  have a hard time believing that now.

The Wail of Enion

I am made to sow the thistle for wheat, the nettle for a nourishing dainty:
I have planted a false oath in the earth, it has brought forth a Poison Tree:
I have chosen the serpent for a counsellor, and the dog
For a schoolmaster to my children:
I have blotted out from light and living the dove and nightingale,
And I have caused the earthworm to beg from door to door:
I have taught the thief a secret path into the house of the just:
I have taught pale Artifice to spread his nets upon the morning
My heavens are brass, my earth is iron, my moon a clod of clay,
My sun a pestilence burning at noon, and a vapour of death in night.

What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song,
Or Wisdom for a dance in the street? No! it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath — his house, his wife, his children.
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
And in the wither’d field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain.

It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer’s sun,
And in the vintage, and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn:
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,
To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,
To listen to the hungry raven’s cry in wintry season,
When the red blood is fill’d with wine and with the marrow of lambs:

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements;
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter-house moan;
To see a God on every wind and a blessing on every blast;
To hear sounds of Love in the thunderstorm that destroys our enemy’s house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, and the sickness that cuts off his children,
While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruits and flowers.

Then the groan and the dolour are quite forgotten, and the slave grinding at the mill,
And the captive in chains, and the poor in the prison, and the soldier in the field
When the shatter’d bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead:
It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity —
Thus would I sing and thus rejoice; but it is not so with me.