What We Choose to Fight Is So Tiny!

Dear Learners,

Below I copied a portion of a note I had sent to a student who was working feverishly to complete a project. I thought some of you might benefit from reading some of my response and the two poems here.
------

You mention that you have short-comings. We all do. That's what thickens the
plot.

Otherwise we would be something other than human.

To share those short-comings is also a human necessity under the Big Tent of Journalism as I see it. And there are things that are kept private, too. Finding the right balance is the trick that I seek constantly.

Know that this project-- with its revelations of humanity, past and present‹forces you to grapple in enlightening and educational ways with your private truths and falsehoods and your public ones, too.

In that process, we professors grapple with our own truths and falsehoods as
well.

To that end, I offer two poems I like.

I thought about these when I re-read your note and when I thought about your work and the issue of control: who has it, who wants it, who does not want it, and why, and what is BEYOND control, in another sphere from it, in the land of meaningful Story, based on the time-honored verities and based on the things we can see, hear, taste, touch & smell, and, yes, photograph and record.

POEM ONE.

Antonio Machado untitled poem, translated from Spanish by Robert
Bly.

And he was the demon of my dreams, the most handsome
Of all angels. His victorious eyes
Blazed like steel,
And the flames that fell
From his torch like drops
Lit up the deep dungeon of the soul.

"Will you go with me?"
"No, never! Tombs
And dead bodies frighten me."
But his iron hand took mine.

"You will go with me"...And in my dream I walked
Blinded by his red torch.
In the dungeon I heard the sound of chains
And the stirrings of beasts that were in cages.

POEM TWO.

The Man Watching by Rainer Rilke, translated by Bly.

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.