POT POURRI

                        (i)

Success has not been slow forthcoming

In that sphere of less importance;

Pride, however, wanes in ever

Widening circles of discontent.

Talent certainly does not bear revelation

And despite times of unmitigated joy

There has never failed to come eventual

Realisation in the rational light of dawn.

An inner longing fills my spirit;

my whole frame burns with the sense

of something missing – a vast yearning

for mental and physical satisfaction.

That symbolism of the missing substance,

quality, or what you will,

dares not escape me.  It recurs

at all too frequent intervals

to be misunderstood.

                                    It is the desire

for absolute, unequivocal, sexual gratification,

not merely in that narrow limited sphere

of moral disbelief,

but something over and above.

It is as if I grasped for something

far above my head;

the farther that my eager groping

hand does reach, the less the satisfaction,

until finally naught else can grant relief

save complete ecstasy of soul and frame;

which ecstasy by not forthcoming,

disillusionment creeps in;

and not just that, but vast disgust

in mine own self, which is refracted

and superimposed upon the other members

of society.

                                    My quarrel is not with them

nor yet with certain individuals

on whom I must from time to time give vent,

but it is with myself

and with my angry mood of discontentment.

                                    (ii)

And now some empty pages testify

to a period of renewed activity,

to a casting-off of the cloak of stagnation

and a donning of the mantle of relief.

The individual has at last asserted

his instinctive impulses; for once unfettered

and released from moral servitude,

the mind indulges in such promiscuity

as can be satisfied by physical device.

Llanelly – town of limitless spiritual freedom.

No convention, no morality, save that which is inspired

by a fierce quality of righteousness

proceeding from a frame unleashed

and unrestricted by the bounds of Nature.

No longer does one share the deep respect

that formerly could words alone inspire,

but action, liveliness and doing

the act, instead of merely talking,

thinking and hoping.

                                    The expulsion of all

that had died, decayed and rotted

and lay about in memory and in mind,

was now washed clean by the purity

of satisfaction.

                                    Oh! how can this relief

be held by such a number in contempt

and felt to be unclean?

                                    And how can they,

with egotism born of sheer hypocrisy,

desiring though unconsciously themselves,

condemn an act which Nature does invite?

That Nature which they hold in high regard

and use with subtle arguments to prove

the unreality of change.

A Nature which must be itself committed

To all forms of abandonment.

Oh, aching flesh and ecstasy

of soul.

Oh burning tender passion

now relieved.

I have been granted what I most desired

in breadth of scope

and unlimited mental freedom.

                                    (iii)

Alas the tides run out;

the conflict ebbs and flows

yet never ceases,

for change is interminable.

I have a goal, I have a starting post,

but how to find the safest route between?

My goal the attainment of all I hold dear;

I start with half the race already run.

But I had not anticipated competitive force

of such magnitude.

                    To go where one desires to be

may cause but only momentary gain,

for he also loses who gains.

A life, a hope, a living dream.

These things are not important in themselves,

but what they stand for,

what they represent:

emotions, feelings, instincts that comprise

the mental individual.

The are the inner substance;

the hard core of resistance.

These are they which suffer

if one does not succeed.

                                    (iv)

This incessant bickering,

this petty argument,

values changing overnight:

loss, gain, accumulation

of annoyance piled on annoyance.

“Such a small thing,” you may say,

but how these trivialities expand

and take on great importance in our minds.

Necessity, expenditure, durability;

just words, conveying little in themselves;

language divorced from its context

and, in the process, losing

any semblance of sense.

In manner similar to this

the mind picks up its fragmentations;

enlarges on it and contracts,

but alters.

                                    For nothing is static but change.

Man himself is continually changing,

developing in physical and mental growth.

But man, the individual - the inner self:

unconscious, a-moral, never satisfied -

appears fixated; as if caught in the grasp

of something stronger than himself;

and yet retains the lack of scope

in differentiating right from wrong:

the worthless thought from the important.

The inner self must be a child,

demonstrative and eager to discard

all adulthood’s responsibilities.

And so as life unfolds its weary span,

these doubts and apprehensions must recur

and one can only strive tenaciously

to subdue the little devil in the breast.

Longmoor, January 1949