THE BIG QUESTIONS, 11: HIS WAILING WALL (IS THERE A NEED FOR GOD? WHY IS THERE A NEED TO BE GOOD?)

This is Poem #11 in my series of poem responses to the Big Questions posed by philosophers, scientists, theologians, even village cranks, to help celebrate National Poetry Month (NaPoMo, April 2013). Do We Need A God? Why is there a Need to be Good?---Simon Blackburn 

 

HIS  WAILING WALL

 

Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant --- Tacitus*

 

Either way, distance finds me

looking up or down this cliff,
an unlikely sanctuary I escape
into aching for scarce solitude.

How can one be alone among

the darting seagulls? Or silent
with lost memories jarred by
blasts of breaking waves below?

Here, gods revel in their haven

of whistling winds and clouds,
down there fishermen cackle,
chewing sargasso, guzzling gin,

while their thrown nets fill up

with flotsam floating around
moss-gowned boulders staring
at the sky like dark green eyes.

Is it this vast and empty space

between that scares me now,
when I should be murmuring
secrets to messenger winds?

I would scream unbearable

pain, holler down bitter anger;
I must share muffled grief,
loosen taut shackles of despair.

Either way, I find wailing walls

in air, water, rocks, and wind;
like Job I weep for peace, hope
to gently fall in the cup of palms

waiting to catch my carrion

now carved out of a shattered
world of faithlessness and fear,
unable to hold on to life or love.

On this piece of jutting rock,

have I not found the little place
where I could reach His Hand
quickly were I to fall, either way?

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

 

 

Simon Blackburn is a philsophy professor at the University of Cambridge in England. His essays "Why Be Good?" (pp. 94 etseq) and "Do We Need God?" (pp. 159 etseq), are included in the The Big Questions, Philosophy, 2009, Quercus Publishing Plc, London,  UK.