A Brave and Startling Truth

I have always loved this poem by Maya Angelou. In light of recent events both personal and global, its meaning resonates ever more deeply. Maya Angelou was rushed to hospital in Los Angeles yesterday evening. Maya, beloved lioness of my heart, may you make a successful recovery, or find serene passage.



A Brave and Startling Truth 
by Maya Angelou  (1928 -  )


We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

the leaping greenly spirits of trees

Photo by Liana Joyce

Sorry folks, but the garden has just gone ka-BLOOM with spring, and jobs that I was too lazy to attend to during the autumn and winter can no longer be ignored. So I will be spending more time outdoors pruning, staking plants, clearing flower beds of their winter debris, mulching, wrangling a recalcitrant willow igloo into shape and, hopefully, stealing a march on the weeds. At least until hay fever drives me back inside. Oh what fun my gluteus maximus is already having from my exertions which began in earnest last week. Naturally, I reward myself handsomely at the end of a hard day's graft with a very large whisky, or even two. Anyone who thinks I would subject myself to so much pain just for the pretty flowers is being hopelessly naive. Go munch on a Hallmark card.

I'm also taking advantage of Legs and Noodle still being on Easter break this week, thus making them eminently handy for slug and snail patrol duty. Obviously, they'd rather be indoors watching YouTube or listening to endless repeats of the daft but catchy "Walking on a Dream" by Empire of the Sun, so I shamelessly resort to my old maternal stand-by: bribery by chocolate. How can someone who enjoys gardening as much as me be so terrified of slugs and snails? Totally pathetic, I know. Living in rainy Belgium means we're doomed to having the little bastards around in vast numbers three seasons out of four, no matter what preventive measures we take. They give me the heebie-jeebies. I simply cannot bear to touch them, especially slugs, not even with a long stick, and I would sooner run a mile than crush them underneath my wellies. Eeeeeeeww. When I'm alone and no one's around to rescue me from these disgusting slimy creatures, I keep a salt shaker in my overalls pocket, all the better to send them to a painful demise by meltdown. I didn't mean to get side-tracked, but now y'all know my Achilles heel.

Till next post, I'll leave you with one of my favorite spring poems by e.e. cummings, he of the bolshy punctuation and the lower-case orthography. He was unconventional, funny, romantic and deeply spiritual, a poet after my own heart. I'm certain he never wrote poetry about slugs.


i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


ee cummings (1894-1962)

Good-bye, old friend

Our dear cat Trouble died tonight. We found him at the bottom of the cellar steps just before dinner, lying peacefully, as if asleep. Legs and Noodle are very upset, and although Skunk and I tried to appear brave and grown-up about it, we failed. We brought Trouble home from a trip to the supermarket one day. A pair of siblings had stationed themselves by the entrance, giving away kittens. He was the last one in the box. Skunk and I argued all the way home about the wisdom of such an impulse; mine, of course. We had the pleasure of his company for 17 years. He used to sit in the kitchen and watch me bake all night, back in the days when I had insomnia. Sometimes I would read poetry aloud to him. He liked Stanley Kunitz best. He never cared much for our current dog Mia.

We shall bury him in the garden between the cherry tree and the honeysuckle, next to our previous dog Banzai, a Rhodesian Ridgeback who was his best mate.

I miss him already. Good-bye, Trubbie.