THE BIG QUESTIONS, 23: CONTRA MUNDUM (WHY SHIELD HEART, HEARTH, AND HOME WITH DEFIANCE?)

This is Poem #23 in my poem-a-day responses to the Big Questions to celebrate National Poetry Month (NaPoMo, Apeil 2013). What price life if it were merely a wading through the gentle streams of a lotus land?

CONTRA MUNDUM

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.—Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur

 

Like silt at the bottom of creek boulders,
wading against the current must be residue

of a proclaimed apostasy, a paradise lost,
somewhere East of Eden. But it was good.

There would be toil and a struggle for love,
and upon his progeny an edict of suffering
pain at the birth of all begotten offspring.

But does this act not bring exquisite joy?

What price life if it were merely a wading
through the gentle streams of a lotus land?

Why flaunt dominion over all that grows
or dies for these where nature is never spent?*

Let me shield my heart, hearth, and home
with all the strength and defiance I can hold.

—ALBERT B. CASUGA

*Hopkins