The wonder of the world
There is a poem by that fine, but neglected poet George Barker called “Allegory of the Adolescent and the Adult.” It has long been a favorite of mine. “It was when weather was Arabian,” it begins. “I walked / Like Saint Christopher Columbus through a sea’s welter / Of gaudy ways looking for a wonder.”
But the wonder proves elusive. Our young speaker tells us that “hollyhock here and rock and rose there were,” but “I wound among them knowing they were no wonder.” A bird with a worm and a fox in a wood fail to meet muster as well, for “I was / Wanting a worse wonder, a rarer one.”
So he goes on, “expecting miraculous catastrophe,” though a bit anxious as well: “How shall I know my marvel when it comes?” He continues his way until …
… after long striding and striving I was where
I had so long longed to be, in the world’s wind,
At the hill’s top, with no more ground to wander
Excepting downward, and I had found no wonder.
Found only the sorrow that I had missed my marvel.
Then he remembers: “It was / When on the hilltop I stood in world’s wind.” He realizes:
The world is my wonder, where the wind
Wanders like wind, and where the rock is
Rock. And man and woman flesh on a dream.
Barker was only about 22 when he wrote that poem, and I don’t think I was much older when I first encountered it. I immediately bonded with it. It encapsulated an intuition I had — obviously one that Barker had as well — that in the pursuit of one’s dreams one might just miss the marvels life had to offer.
One Sunday in May, when I was 15, I took a long hike. In late afternoon on the way back, I paused above a ridge and looked over the stream far below to where the sun was burnishing the trees on the other side. I had the feeling, which has never left me — that scene is as bright in my memory as if I had lived it yesterday — that I was looking into time, not space — the time allotted me to live.
Now that I have used up a good part of that allotment I find myself returning to Barker’s poem from time to time. One of the interesting things about life is that, while some things may turn out more or less as you expected they might, most don’t, and those that don’t prove to be more important than the others. Another interesting thing about life is how many of the things you thought were important turn out to be not so important after all.
I think it was Leibniz who said that the fundamental philosophical question is this: “Why is there something and not nothing?” But for you and me and everybody else, there is an even more fundamental question than that: Why am I?
Leibniz’s question, like most philosophical questions, has to do with grand matters, the universe, all of being. But what does any of that mean to any of us as individuals? Not a hell of a lot, I submit. What you and I are most concerned with is — you and I in the here and now.
I took a break from writing this column to go out for a walk and clear my head. And you know what grabbed my attention? This very sidewalk beneath my feet, that tree I was passing, the sky above, unlike any before or again. In other words, the here and now with me in its midst — the only world any of us really cares about, the one each of us actually inhabits: our very own, private one.
I began with a fine, neglected poet, and I shall end with one: John Hall Wheelock, who, in a lovely piece called “Dear Men and Women,” puts it thus:
I have learned it from them at last, who am now grown old
A happy man, that the nature of things is tragic
And meaningful beyond words, that to have lived
Even if once only, once and no more,
Will have been — oh, how truly — worth it.
The world is my wonder. It’s yours, too.
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Frank, as always, you have offered us something wonder-filled to contemplate. In many ways, I think, I share in your sensibilities. In that regard, you remind me that I have almost always been acutely aware (which is a wonder-filled word) that I (and, I presumed, other humans–and perhaps animals) had been given a special gift to be enjoyed during life: having perceptions (senses) that lead to consciousness. I still often catch myself in tiny moments wondering about my perceptions of the vastness and minuteness that surrounds me. Like Hamlet, I wonder (there is that word again) what kinds of perceptions will remain when I permanently sleep. And since there is no way of being informed (i.e., aware) of the nature of that permanent sleep, I content myself with the tiny moments. At the same time, though, I am aware (and there is that word again) that too many tiny moments escape my perceptions. Perhaps I should be more attentive.