Don't Answer

 

THE SONG OF THE MAN WHO CAME THROUGH

 

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!

A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.

If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!

If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!

If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed

By the fine, fine wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world

Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;

If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge

Driven by invisible blows,

The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides. 

 

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,

I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,

Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

 

What is the knocking?

What is the knocking at the door in the night?

It is somebody wants to do us harm.

 

No, no, it is the three strange angels. 

Admit them, admit them. 

                                                - D.H. Lawrence

 

Not an easy poem for a Friday night, but as the week’s blogposts testify, it speaks to my experience. All I’m reporting here is the way the winds of my destiny carry me like a winged gift to the wonder that has always bubbled up in my soul. No need to guess whether “I would be a good fountain” — every day in class I’m gushing forth. 

 

But it is the end of the poem that got me thinking about it. The question of who is knocking and should we answer the door. Right now, the knock on the door is checking into what happened in the so-called (and misnamed) debates. The little snippets of reporting I hear make it clear—that is a door that I do not want to open right now. It indeed is something that wants to do me harm, preying on fears and anxieties and trying to pull me down into the swamp of who we have become by the horrible choices we’ve made and the toxic narratives we keep telling and re-telling. In the midst of this New Orleans musical paradise both inside my class and out on the street, why would I ever want to answer that knock?

 

So I will quietly decline Lawrence’s suggestions that the three strange angels are outside and I should admit them. Not now. Maybe never.