Monday's Poetry: "A Brave and Startling Truth"

 

by Pa Rock

Poetry Appreciator

Back in the spring of 1999, just a few days after the birth of my first grandchild, and just as I was completing my graduate degree in social work, I had the opportunity to take a social work-related student tour to Russia and Sweden.  While on that tour one of the places of interest that we visited was Red Square in Moscow. a large, paved parade field that is home to Lenin's Tomb, an edifice on which Russian dignitaries sit while watching military parades on Red Square.   The Square is bordered at one end by the iconic St. Basil's Cathedral, the church with the famous onion-dome spires that tourists flock to photograph, and along one side by the enormous GUM Department Store (a.k.a. "The State Department Store").  On the other side of Red Square, across from the GUM and just behind Lenin's Tomb, sits the Kremlin, the seat of the Russian government.

Beneath the wall separating the Kremlin from Lenin's Tomb is an area referred to as the "necropolis" where many heroes of the old Soviet Union are buried either in the wall or at the base of the wall.  As I walked along that stretch of memorial, I remember being drawn to two names in particular.  One was an American journalist by the name of John "Jack" Reed, an early 20th century communist who was made famous to later generations by Warren Beatty's portrayal of him in the 1981 film, "Reds."  The other name to catch my eye was that of Yuri Gargarin, the Russian cosmonaut who was the first human being to travel into space.

It was sixty years ago today that the young Gargarin (aged 27) took that first famous ride beyond the Earth's atmosphere and out into space, a ride that ushered in a new age in science and technology, and bigger dreams for mankind.  I remember that April day back in 1961.  It was one of those rare days when the world underwent a fundamental change.

In 2014 the United States launched an experimental spacecraft called "Orion" to test various new technologies for travel into deep space.  Along with new scientific gizmos and gee haws were a few other items of a more commemorative nature.   One of those was a copy of the following poem by Maya Angelou.  Like much of what the poet wrote, this piece needs no explanation, only the benefit of a quiet space for a deep appreciation - someplace as quiet and somber as space itself.

A Brave and Startling Truth

by Maya Angelou

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 are 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.