Love and peace

This is the introduction to my 30th book of poetry. It will be out shortly.

Introduction

It is the tail-end of 2023. I am seventy four years old and have spent my life wondering, loving and protesting. I have discovered that life is a heady mixture of awe and pitfalls.

I live on a big hunk of rock hurtling through space at colossal speeds. I share my home with billions of wonders. Each organism a living miracle.

I stare out into the universe and my jaw drops.

I coexist with a mad bunch of apes whose brains have outgrown their ability to reason. Overcome by selfish lust for power and wealth, possessing a love of violence and inflicting pain, they are intent on destruction. Their ability to hate outstrips their ability to love. They invent banal religions faster that bacilli multiply so that they do not have to try to fathom the wonders of reality, of mind, space, infinity, the creation of the universe or how life began and evolved. Job done. God, Allah, Beelzebub, Apollo, Zeus, Vishna or Viracocha (or any of the other millions of gods we invented) did it. They have a plan and a purpose. No need to think or wonder. All will be revealed.

Their politics is just as insane.

So this year the Muslims try to kill Jews and Christians. The Jews and Christian kill Muslims. The believers in democracy kill the tyrants and the totalitarian despots kill the people.

2023 has seen wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Sudan, Nigeria, Mali, Congo, Ethiopia, Colombia, Somalia, and Burkina Faso. Then we have the anarchic continuation of previous wars – Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Russia and China are arming. We have nuclear buttons all over the place.

The USA is being torn apart with populist imbeciles like Trump and Taylor-Green. A wave of populist ultra-right fascism, with the likes of Oban, Erdogan, Modi, Milei, Melononi and Le Penn, is engulfing the world.

We managed to rid ourselves of the narcissistic buffoon but we’ve still got the legacy of thirteen years of greed and corruption. Our public services are in tatters. The country is bankrupt. Brexit is the disaster we said it would be. While the architects of this devastation are swanning off with their millions – Cameron and Greenswill, Johnson and lunch speech clowning, May and public speaking, Mone and PPE, Osbourne and consultancies. The revolving door, backhanders and VIP lanes.

Inequality rules.

Racism and misogyny is evident everywhere.

Never has the stench been so bad.

Global warming gathers pace with floods, droughts, fires and storms.

More species are becoming extinct or endangered by the minute.

The world is in crisis with mass migration as millions flee war and extreme weather. Tribalism thrives and is exploited by populist despots. Outsiders are scapegoated. Civil wars ferment.

Meanwhile, the backdrop to this dark pantomime of gothic horror is a vast universe that is being revealed by Hubble and James Webb telescopes in all its unbelievable glory; the unfathomable mystery of quantum worlds and the perennial mystery of life itself.

Natural continues to inspire and amaze. Sunsets and seascapes are as majestic and overpowering as ever. All life is astoundingly beautiful.

My family continues to pick its way through the pitfalls of drugs, alcohol, violence and social division that underpins the society we live in – and this is close to the best there is.

At times I am overwhelmed by beauty and wonder; at other times I am incensed by the horrors and stupidity.

It certainly has provided me with sufficient stimulation to put together this, my thirtieth book of poetry.

Moved to put pen to paper, to pour out my inner feelings, the words have flowed in torrents.

I distil them into rhythms and let them free in a hopeless gesture.

Opher – 19.12.2023