Wake Humanity Wake
From the slumber of your soul
Re-member who you are
The self-awareness of the Earth herself
Pull yourself together
And rise with all your forces
Like Arthur from under Albion’s green and pleasant hills
Ride the Great Dragon of your wild heart
Into a future worthy of You
Wake! Now!
Or forever hold your peace.
5 Comments
I love the sentiment here, Peter. This could have been my voice, many times in my life. But if the audience doesn’t have the capacity to choose their cognition this can’t work for those folk. For the folk who can hear this as actionable, might we not have taken the advised move already? This is really about the bigger question…how to engage in a world where most folks have no capacity for objectivity?
Hi Tom – nice to see you here :-). This was really a cry from the belly rather than a reflection from the head. In that sense it should resonate with the less cognitive value systems in many of us.
Dear Peter
When i read your words I remembered this poem and how it really woke me once.
Re-reading it I see how meaningful to me your lines;
Re-member who you are
The self-awareness of the Earth herself
She wakes me again…..do not go back to sleep.
Pegasus
by Patrick Kavanagh
My soul was an old horse
Offered for sale in twenty fairs.
I offered him to the Church–the buyers
Were little men who feared his unusual airs.
One said: ‘Let him remain unbid
In the wind and rain and hunger
Of sin and we will get him–
With the winkers thrown in–for nothing.’
Then the men of State looked at
What I’d brought for sale.
One minister, wondering if
Another horse-body would fit the tail
That he’d kept for sentiment-
The relic of his own soul–
Said, ‘I will graze him in lieu of his labour.’
I lent him for a week or more
And he came back a hurdle of bones,
Starved, overworked, in despair.
I nursed him on the roadside grass
To shape him for another fair.
I lowered my price. I stood him where
The broken-winded, spavined stand
And crooked shopkeepers said that he
Might do a season on the land–
But not for high-paid work in towns.
He’d do a tinker, possibly.
I begged, ‘O make some offer now,
A soul is a poor man’s tragedy.
He’ll draw your dungiest cart,’ I said,
‘Show you short cuts to Mass,
Teach weather lore, at night collect
Bad debts from poor men’s grass.’
And they would not.
Where the
Tinkers quarrel I went down
With my horse, my soul.
I cried, ‘Who will bid me half a crown?’
From their rowdy bargaining
Not one turned. ‘Soul,’ I prayed,
‘I have hawked you through the world
Of Church and State and meanest trade.
But this evening, halter off,
Never again will it go on.
On the south side of ditches
There is grazing of the sun.
No more haggling with the world….’
As I said these words he grew
Wings upon his back. Now I may ride him
Every land my imagination knew.
Thank you! Great poem!
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