In-gratitude and Other Poems

Neville Symington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781855758230
• eBook ISBN: 9780429914942
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

'Where does the creative act come from? No one knows. All the rash of literature in recent times from artists, scientists and theologians on the subject of consciousness finds its origin in this puzzle.Creating what has happened to one into an art form has one effect: it dissolves the barrier between the present and the past. The past is constantly stimulated into life by present experiencesparticularly when listening to someone else relating their experiences. It brings me then into a close sharing of experience with the other. Analytic theories are substitutes for these personal experiences.So these poems are a few casual glimpses when the spirit has risen to the challenge. They are not a big offering but they mean a lot to me. The most important of these is the long poem IN-GRATITUDE which comes first.

In-Gratitude

Introduction

I was fifty-six when this poem was written and, as is clear, it is about a week of conversations with my mother shortly before she died. They were the most important conversations I ever had with her and wronght a huge change in me and, I believe, were extremely important to her. I wrote down the conversations after each visit as close to verbatim as possible. About two years later I transformed them into this poem. In addition to the things we actually said to each other I also included in the poem some of my own self-reflections.

I have put this poem among the section of poems of childhood and put it first because my mother gave birth to me and suckled me as a baby and the whole of my life is inferred in this amazing dialogue that occurred between us. There is a tendency in the mental health world to blame mothers for one’s misfortune. There is also a belief that one has a right to one’s mother’s love. I think these ‘rights’ which people believe belongs to them is the cause of much resentment and unhappiness in the world. Bob Gosling, who was Chairman at the Tavistock Clinic for ten years from the mid-seventies to mid-eighties wrote the following in a letter to me:

In my view what gave me life, or at least saved me from death, is the amazing fact that my mother had inborn tendencies to minister to my infant helplessness and that they were sufficiently supported socially and culturally for her to work the miracle. From my point of view this was a totally unmerited gift—Grace, in fact. Ave Maria! So the choices we have to make everyday now in so far as they are very derived or developed forms of this first relationship depend on how much we can acknowledge and honour this Gift (and become identified with it).¹

We live in a culture where everyone is always clamouring about their rights. G.K. Chesterton who was one of the heroes of my youth said,

“A whole generation has been taught to talk nonsense at the top of its voice about having ‘a right to life’ and ‘a right to experience’ and ‘a right to happiness.’”²

I am deeply grateful to my mother and my father for the love that they showered upon me from my earliest years and right through their lives. My mother wrote to me nearly every week of my life when I was apart from her. It was such a joy when I was at school to see the envelope with the familiar sloping handwriting, then the same later when I was locked away in theological college. Her letters were always full of news of family and friends. She was a wonderful correspondent. I am only sorry that I did not keep her letters.

One of the great human puzzles is what is it that can change one from meanness to generosity, from ingratitude to gratitude, from blame to forgiveness? I think these possibities do lie in our heart but that we need some powerful event to shake our miserable natures and root our being in these treasures that lie hidden in us. Tolstoy understood this very well. In his superb novel Anna Karenina Karenin is journeying from St. Petersburg back to his home in Moscow where his wife Anna was dying and had just given birth to a son whose father was Vronsky and not Karenin. Karenin was hoping while journeying towards home that Anna would die but when he saw her and the little baby, his heart melted and Tolstoy says of him:

“… it was not until he saw his dying wife that he knew his own heart.”³

I think something similar happened to me in that precious week when I was with my mother before she died. It must mean that there was a generosity and gratitude inside me but it had become spoiled with cancerous spores that had infused them with indignant self-righteousness. Karenin’s pride was wounded when Anna revealed her sexual affair with Vronsky. My pride was wounded when … It took the event described in the poem for me to know my own heart. This deeper knowledge ‘worked the miracle’ and banished for ever that sour resentment.

In-Gratitude

I started with some pleasantries
‘How are you feeling, Mum?’
It was absurd to say it
For sighs and heavy breathing
And groggy speech spoke death.

My days were full of business then
Of self-important men.
Visits to my Mum were squeezed
Between lunch and consultation
Until a deeper rumbling sounded.

A groan was speaking deeply
Smothered ‘neath this social haste
I rushed them through my brain
With chairman-like efficiency
And across my friendly Julian.

But Julian echoed depths
Of mother’s death he told;
Regret he’d never asked her
‘Is there nought you want to say?’
And he looked me in the eye.

You can see I wished I’d done it;
The chance is in your lap,
‘I’m returning to Australia, Mum,
Is there nought you want to say
Before I fly across the globe?’

The truth of Julian’s words
Could not be pushed away
His voice I had to follow
And practicalities were dead
With chairman in the grave.

A light now beamed on Julian;
Transformed - he’s now my friend
His closeness to me now
Counted not by watch or body
But by echoes in the depths.

A person enters life
A brief encounter if you like
Yet it is a beam of light
Much greater than all meetings
Of my sunny social life.

In trembling fear but knowledge
That something good would come:
‘Australia when I go there, Mum,
May be the last I see you.’
Her face suppressed some tears.

‘I know I may be dead by then’,
She spoke direct and true.
A nervous smile upon her lips
She looked me in the eyes
Which made the point eternal.

My words had voiced a favoured thought
T’was clearly on her mind.
She had been thinking long on it.
The daring instant brought right out
Our souls to trusting harmony.

Those awe-filled words did split
A chest of moving memories
Stretched back to earliest days.
The key disclosing life’s own throb;
Might’ve stayed within my chest.

What is the fear of speaking words?
So simple on the written page
Yet having power to crack the heart
And open souls to love or hate
Or just appalling emptiness?

A great abyss would open deep
And chasmèd each on either side
Cracked icebergs parting on the seas
And safe protection lost for good
Replaced instead with spirits bound.

Each moment’s now eternity.
Passing beyond our present sense
And stamped with spirit infinite
That passes through her life and mine
Stands warden of redeeme’d time.

A new era opens up for both
Abiding there since early years
But never voiced til near to death
A secret life within the depths
Is clearly there for each to know.

Is depth too much for daily life?
That only crisis can reveal?
That common parlance, jokes and chat
Is all that humans can embrace?
Emotion tides being kept for death?

And silence gave a place for thought,
No hurried words to stop a gap.
This whole new world into a womb
Of caring quiet that holds it all
And now all words were synchronous.

“Is there something I could do for you?
Like message to a friend or no?”
“Do something please for Susan Rumsey.
I cared for her a three years full
Adopted child she was to me.

So hard to mother other’s child
What is right and what is wrong
Is easily judged for one’s own
But judging for another’s child
Is hard and painful - all unknown.”

I felt a tear wetten my eye
So sad that she had kept this in
This burden hidden all these years
Unshared with Dad or Jill or James
And only now revealed to me.

She had so often wanted me
To be with her for company.
‘Possessive Mum’ my sour reply
Yet if I’d spoken laser words
The gates of silence would have parted.

I could have given something back
A tiny bit, minute I’d say
For all she gave and gave and gave
And never stopped through all my life
A tiny fraction could be repaid.

Within the Church the mother was
Placed upon a pedestal
And almost worshipped you might say.
I did my bidding as commanded
And worshipped her in frantic frenzy.

Then a saner view prevailed
The place of Mary overdone
A reformer’s heart replaced the Catholic
Slowly was the mother spurned
From the high place of hitherto.

Analysis was Protestant
A ritual now of retribution.
Mum now went from bad to worse,
Jealous greed or envy rife
Filled all my mind from dawn to dusk.

A poison viper dwelt inside
Within my breast a hatred lay
Filled with venom and foul sludge
Hidden from the world around
It bred there like a parasite.

But own it in myself did I?
Not a thought of holy me
Harbouring such viciousness.
Envy, greed and jealousy
Belonged to others not to me.

And hated I these vices now
And there they were in her I say
Her very presence did I loathe
And wished her from my hideous sight
Obliterated from my view.

A loathsome sight she was to me
All blame was heaped upon her now
All the vicious things in me
I hated in her character
Loathing even kind affection.

Never was a son so bad
He hated his maternal flesh,
Lest we turn to oldest classics
Of Ancient Greece and find it there
In Agammemnon’s fateful breast.

Did she turn in just revenge?
She kept this vileness all inside
Maintaining all her love for me
Not once rejecting me, her son
Or exacting retribution.

With this fierce expulsion now
I expelled to her all treasures too.
She held all these secure for me
Safer than a banker’s trust
Returning them when I was ready.

This loathing was a passion now
So strong it now consumed my soul
And rotted all my faculties,
It lasted a dozen years at least
Corrupting my being’s inwardness.

All this venon to her was pointed
Only aimed at her own person.
It was a madness of huge proportions.
Hidden from the world around
By keeping it in mother’s safe.

Why did I point it all at her?
Her magnet now attracting it?
I knew she was the only one
To tolerate such viciousness
She would not divorce her younger son.

And I the little innocent
And analyst endorsed it all.
No doubt I egged him on apace.
It was a cure of my own soul
But only at her cruel expense.

This twisted vision of events
Believed by analyst entirely
I pulled the wool across his eyes
He treated me with warm compassion
Believing me, the maltreated one.

Harsh words I hear my colleagues say
Aghast to hea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• IN-GRATITUDE
• THE ILL-CHILD
• BUTTERFLY BOY
• CARMEN
• FATHER KENNETH
• QUICKSAND
• BONFIRE AT ST. MARTIN’S
• THE BEAR CUB
• BURIED ALIVE
• BECOMING GOD
• THE FIRST BORN
• BLACK POPLAR
• THE NEWSPAPER SELLER
• THE SPORE OF POETRY
• JEANNIE’S PASSING
• THE ATHEIST’S GOD
• DOURO TRUCKS
• SHAME
• RICHARD