.
Mud
Our clip-on angel wings
are cast from shards of glass,
The sorry hymns we sing
are drowned in blaring brass.
It’s not that we are crazed
as we rub our magic rings,
but our spirit has been caged
by a lifetime’s mud that clings.
Though we grandly theorise
and curse our lowly birth,
when we try to scale the skies
we tumble back to earth.
It’s not that we are fools
when we struggle to be wise,
It’s our craving that is cruel
as the mud that clamps us dries.
Like water let us flow
till we find our given place
and with cheerfulness forgo
the rainbows that we chase.
It’s not that there’s no worth
in the humble mud below,
The meek shall take the earth
where the angels dare not go.
.
.
Alan Brayne is a retired teacher and lecturer from England now living in Malta. Recently self-published a book of poems, fiction and essays, Digging for Water. The author of three novels set in Indonesia: Jakarta Shadows, Kuta Bubbles, and Lombok Flames. His website is alanbrayne.com.
What a sweet, lovely and deceptively deep description of our human condition. The image of mud is perfect and I love the phrase, “Our clip-on angel wings.” I’ve never had a pair but I’ve heard you can find nearly anything on Amazon! Here’s mud in your eye, Alan.
I agree with James Tweedie. It’s a lovely poem with such a gentle flow throughout like the water it mentions and uses for advice.
Alan, as a lament, this Larkinesque ode is bittersweet. It is our ‘mud’ or human nature that we tend to be overly tied to. It is an apt metaphor for many of us: where the waters of Baptism should cleanse us, rather, it is a reminder that to dust we shall return (“a lifetime’s mud that clings”). To steal a phrase, maybe it is the unbearable lightness of being that causes us to ‘wallow in the mire’ (pace, Jim Morrison).
And then turning to the literal twist of the meek inheriting the earth by returning to it. . . your slyness is showing, Mr Brayne!
Jonathan Kinsman
Thank you, James, jd and Jonathan for your kind feedback. I’m always scared when I rhyme that my rhymes might be a bit too obvious and my work may clunk, so the comment about the flow was especially welcome.
It is a long-established literary topos that human beings are made of clay or earth or mud or dirt. Brayne changes this topos by making the mud something external to ourselves, which might be understood as the body serving as a cage or container for our non-material souls.
Thanks for your feedback. You’re right – the underlying metaphor (at least for the first two verses) is ‘the ghost in the machine’ or the soul trapped in the body. Interesting, because it’s a way of looking I’d reject philosophically. But when we write, we don’t analyse in that way.
This split between mind and matter is very common. Is it intrinsic to the human brain, or just something deeply embedded in our culture?
The third verse is influenced by my interest in Taoism, I think.
“…it’s a way of looking I’d reject philosophically. But when we write, we don’t analyse in that way.”
My deepest thanks to you, Mr. Brayne! I’ve been trying for decades to get poets to recognize this truth. A poem is a fictive artifact, and it doesn’t have to express a viewpoint or attitude that the poet personally shares or believes in or supports. ALL IT HAS TO BE IS AN EFFECTIVE AND AESTHETICALLY GOOD POEM, nothing else. When you are making a fictive artifact, you can say or do or imagine whatever the bloody hell you like. Poetry is a licensed zone of hyper-reality.
Yes, I basically agree with you. Perhaps I’d say that the poet believes something when he or she says it, but it’s the poet who believes in that moment, not the person the poet is in the rest of his or her life.
I find it strange how people accept without question the idea that fiction writers can create characters who are nothing like themselves, and yet there is a general expectation that poets must bare their souls or their ‘real selves’ when they write poetry.
Alan, I like the way your poem romps along with a jaunty rhythm and I love the striking imagery. To me, it speaks of our very human condition… and the wonder of it… the closing couplet shines with hope and joy. Thank you!
Thanks for your kind comment.
This is my first poem here on Classical Poets, so I’m still finding my feet. I really must start returning the compliment and comment on other people’s work.
What a stick in the mud! Ambivalence about its symbolism is the essence of your well-written poem, Alan. Although you begin with mud as inescapable in all its filth and downward drag, you make a quick turn with “Like water let us flow.” Now mud does flow as well, and water can be a dangerously overwhelming flow, but this change of perspective itself makes a quick change. First four lines of last stanza level out passively with the recommendation to abandon cruel cravings thwarted by mud. But last four lines find worth in humility, bringing in an active potential for meriting inheritance of the mud by working through and in and with one’s mud. This is an East/West contrast. The Eastern portion of the stanza views the lotus (our Classical Poets symbol) as rising pure and natural out of mud. The Western is also classic, expressing the absolute need to merit resurrection of the mud from the mud by works of the spirit done in the body of mud. You affirm the non-angelic quality of muddy humans in both the first and last lines of the poem. Well-chosen subject for a first appearance here, and welcome to you!
Thank you so much for a very thoughtful analysis of my poem and for the time this must have taken you. As you say, I’m new on Classical Poets and one thing I like very much is the interaction I see happening on here.
Personally, when I try to look at it from a distance, I’m surprised by how much Christian imagery there is underlying my poem. The Taoist half-verse about water doesn’t surprise me.
Philosophically it’s a bit of a mess, I suppose, but that’s the point of poetry (except for work that is expressly didactic or polemical).
Thanks again for your response. I must start to return the compliment and respond to other people’s work on here.