This poem has been with me for years. It has been a teacher, a goad, and sometimes a comfort. Strange as that may seem for such an austere poem. Bly’s translation captures key phrases better than the others I have read.
What I see woven in the threads of this poem are the epochal moments of ones life, and also ones age that is being lived in. In WW1 times it must have seemed as though the end of the world was at hand. No less WW2, which I am more familiar with. And also now, in our post WW2 world with all its advances and horrors, including now America’s unsustainable War on Terrorism (whatever that means) and unsustainable war on the environment. As well as the sustainable war on civilization which all this portends… Sustainable in the sense that civilization can indeed be defeated. But it may not be.
And this is the hope that I take from this otherwise apparently dreary poem.
That there is something larger than our own intentions that governs and orders the world with in which we move.
What fights with us is so great!
And, to our undeserved benefit it is indeed still fighting with us. When it stops is when we really have to be concerned.
Till then, I believe that the world will continue to experience unrelenting mayhem. Both in terms created by mankind and his machines, and that dealt to us by the uncontrollable environment. That “Angel” that will not be dominated by us.
I believe there is an emerging consciousness that is not beholden to the existing paradigms of “how it must be”. It must not be how it is any longer. But for that to change requires strength and insight and a consciousness far exceeding what the so-called “masters of the universe” or even less audaciously “leaders of nations” are willing to have.
So the paradigmatic, systemic, change will come, as it always does through those who are willing to listen, and see not how things are, but how they might be. And then set themselves to meet the Angel.
I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can’t bear without a friend,
I can’t love without a sister
The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.
What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler’s sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.
Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.
