3 Versions. Which Do You Prefer?
How Can We Not Love This World?
I am easing back into my Substack reading, so if you haven’t seen me around, trust me, I will return. When life is this uncertain, it’s hard to concentrate—I keep running into these walls where I just, very calmly, stop doing. I just sit down on my suitcase and refuse to move. It’s called burnout. I’m working on taking care of myself, on having fun, on doing the things I need to do. Substack is one of them.
This morning I grabbed a few moments and ended up working on this poem. It’s been a while in the making. I dug it out and started to play with it. I have three versions here. Mostly, its the pronoun usage that I’m interested in. I would love your feedback.
VERSION #1 How can we not love this world, the elegance of it, the way it lifts itself up from sleeping, the way it spreads a blanket on the ground and carefully sets out the potato salad the chicken the cold slices of pie. How can we not love this world, the mothering of it, how she catches the newborns and lifts them to the sun, how she lays the backs of her cool hands across foreheads to gauge fevers how she rubs salve on the congested chests, ladles up cool water whispers sleep sleep sleep. How can we not love her, the brown thicket of her outrageous hair, the yellows and blues, greens dotted with extraordinary profusions of pink. Watch her walking through the orchard, her hands lifted to the sky. Under the bower cathedral, she sings while she prays and calls all creatures great and small to play. And romp. And prance. Listen to the sound of their stampeding feet dancing the apples off the trees. How can we not love her? VERSION #2 How can we not love this world, the elegance of it, the way it lifts itself up from sleeping, the way it spreads a blanket on the ground and carefully sets out the potato salad the chicken the cold slices of pie. How can we not love this world, the mothering of it, how it catches the newborns and lifts them to the sun, how it lays the backs of its cool hands across foreheads to gauge fevers how it rubs salve on the congested chests, ladles up cool water whispers sleep sleep. How can we not love her, the brown thicket of her outrageous hair, the yellows and blues, greens dotted with extraordinary profusions of pink. Watch her walking through the orchard, her hands lifted to the sky. Under the bower cathedral, she sings while she prays and calls all creatures great and small to play. And romp. And prance! Listen to their dancing feet stampeding the apples off the trees. VERSION #3 How can we not love this world, the elegance of her, the way she lifts itself up from sleeping, the way she spreads a blanket on the ground and carefully sets out the potato salad the chicken the cold slices of pie. How can we not love this world, the mothering of her, how she catches the newborns and lifts them to the sun, how it lays the backs of her cool hands across foreheads to gauge fevers how she rubs salve on the congested chests, ladles up cool water whispers sleep sleep sleep. How can we not love her, the brown thicket of her outrageous hair, the yellows and blues, greens dotted with extraordinary profusions of pink. Watch her walking through the orchard, her hands lifted to the sky. Under the bower cathedral, she sing while she prays and calls all creatures great and small to play. And romp. And prance. Listen to the sound of their stampeding feet dancing the apples off the trees. How can we not hear her?
Good morning dear Rebecca (as in - it's early morning here in Oz as I write this).
The advantage of coming late to the party is that everyone else has already reassured the host that it's a great party so you can just go ahead and enjoy yourself.
Not that I enjoy parties. They make my brain explode.
But I did enjoy your poem - greatly - because I can sit reading it in a quiet room at dawn, all alone, while the world busies herself outside my window, putting away the nocturnal fruit bats to sleep hanging upside down in their dim forest hideaway up on the hill and arranging happy birds instead on the trees around our home.
It's V1 for me, my friend.
Love from us
Me and (still asleep) Meg :)
I like version 2 best. Don't require me to analyse why! I like your trees. Now,the words and language are a world apart but a 17thC clergyman left behind a whole lot of writing that says THE SAME ESSENTIAL message. His name was Thomas Traherne and he thought the World was beautiful and that you could be a good Christian and still love the world by which he meant the sunshine, clouds,flowers,trees + other people (very hard to love those).This last idea is why I do not like the Gnostics. Because despite all that inner light stuff they preached that the natural world that looks so beautiful is actually a creation of Satan to distract us from God so we should hate creation,flowers,trees,birdsong etc because it's a false path away from their idea of God,the inner light. I think the established Catholic and Orthodox churches of Christianity were right to oppose and denounce them. Some of the Gnostic followers lived very wicked sinful lives on the premise as that everything was evil but most of it unavoidable you might as well go for it to the extremest extent as if you were an enlightened Perfect you had an automatic shoo-in anyway. How did I get to this from your poem. Just rambling.