Skip to main content

Did we really do that?


Did we really do that?

It’s easy to ask this question as we look back and see what terrible things happened in the past.
Not just happened – but were thought of as normal, unexceptional: what people like you and me were quite happy to countenance, if not actually do.
Well, perhaps some people sometimes felt that was a bit harsh… who knows?
But for the most part, decent folk like you and me just accepted it – that’s how it is, life goes on, why change how we do things and I’ve got quite enough to do already.

Slavery’s an obvious example of course.

I recently wrote a poem about another: the scold’s bridle, an iron helmet with a plate pressing down on the tongue, used on (what were considered to be) vociferous women – yes, almost invariably women.  I was of course pleased that my poem won a prize, but my consequent revisiting the writing of it and the research stirred me up all over again, with a renewed and heightened sense of astonishment and anger.
(The poem’s on the Poetry Society Website, if you want to read it)

Did we really do that?

And what will that question be focused on, as they (‘we’) look back on us?

There are of course several strong candidates, ranging from how we’re destroying our world to the gross inequalities we tolerate, but I hope – and sometimes believe – the time will come when warfare and all that underpins it will be thus seen.

Well, bringing it back to the individual, which is where we started, here’s another example – very much more modest to be sure, but irrevocable. Something we did then that is totally inconceivable now (I choose the word with care).
This one applies just to males, for what that’s worth.

Worth. 

Was it worth it? At the time, society generally, the family and the parents in particular thought it was.  I think of Alessandro himself wondering if the benefit outweighed the cost.

As for us, we are left shocked, asking that same old question – did we really do that?


Alessandro Moreschi


I shed my ballast long ago
so I could fly.  With loss I found
a strength and lift above all others.

I paid the price from my small purse –
two tokens for the future, spent
upon another end.

I cannot say if I regret
that which I cannot do
for I have power to move –

I’ll carry you on wings of song
high into the clouds. I’ll soar and swoop
across this world of sound

I’ll bear you up to heaven even.
Then we shall gently float
to land at last, in silence.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rake Daddy Rake

  As with lots of good stories, there are many versions. Basically this one's about a pair of Wiltshire yokels raking a pond for kegs of smuggled brandy.  They feigned lunacy when surprised by the excise men, saying that they were trying to rake out the full moon which was reflected in the water.  Their ruse was successful. The officials had no trouble in deciding they were lunatics, so left them to their raking. Interestingly, the Lunacy Act of 1842 defined a lunatic as someone ‘afflicted with a period of fatuity in the period following a full moon’. I suppose any time falls into the category of a 'period following a full moon'.  As for fatuity, that might include all of us on certain occasions, not least since it's not stated how long 'a period' is.  Perhaps then we're all occasionally lunatic... Be all that as it may, on this occasion the lunatics (I've put inverted commas round the word and taken them out several times) outwitted the sober and sane, ...

The Three Hares

  The Three Hares We continue on our way running, running, running around held together tip to tip so I can hear what she can hear as well as her. And the other follows me in front of her – we are joined up by our ears so we follow, lead and follow running, running, running around we continue on our way. Running, running, running around – no cause for worry – what's to come has already been. The future's past – watch us here – we're going nowhere – the last is first and first is last. Our present moment sees us still although we seem to race – running, running, running around we continue. On our way running, running, running around hearing your persistent questions – why do you keep on asking? We cannot tell you any more. May you share your senses and find soft silence at your centre which is so close, while you go on running, running, running around. The turning of the year, with the various thoughts about the past and the future that c...

The Beginning of Time

  Which beginning of time [the Creation] according to our Chronologie, fell upon the entrance of the night preceding the twenty third day of October in the year of the Julian Calendar, 710 [i.e. B.C. 4004].   The Annals of the World (1658), p.1 Archbishop James Usher 1581-1656   Yes, anything, even time itself must start somewhere, somewhen – a beginning at a point in time is not an easy calculation   when nothing was and something is, with so much yet to come. All of which we now know well – us who had our own beginnings.     Time began on the night before the twenty third day of October four thousand and four years BC. Do not ask what may have occurred   in those earlier blackberry days. October's a month of beginnings and ends. The swallows have flown.  The fieldfares are here. My sums are done.  Now to make a new start. I spent some time – time again! – searching for an appropriate picture to precede this poem...