The Auguries of Innocence

While working out today I was watching Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man,"  a strange, profane, surreal, absurd, slow-moving Kafkaesque "western."  I woke up at 1:30 a.m. and remembered a line in the movie that struck me--Gary Farmer, playing an Indian named "Nobody," beautifully quoting a poem by William Blake (the name of Johnny Depp's character, though he's from Cleveland and is not the eponymous poet).

So I looked up the poem, The Auguries of Innocence, and read it through a number of times.  And now, here I am at three in the morning blogging about a few lines which I thought were beautiful and powerful and filled with the kind of truth that beckons me to sit down with a poem to get to know it.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to endless night.

The poem was written in couplets over the course of time and according to one commentator arranged rather randomly for publication.  Blake used several of the couplets as the basis for other poems.  Like all Blake's works, this lyrical stanza has a religious intent; but I prefer it as a simple commentary on the inherent injustices of humanity, the wanton biological means for filling a world with Haves and Have Nots.

Speaking of injustices, my vegetarian sensibilities smiled at this one:

The lamb misused breeds public strife
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.

I admit there's a lot more to it than my self-serving interpretation.  Maybe pure allegory, or perhaps some eternal juxtaposition of condemnation, innocence and forgiveness.  I suppose both scholars and preachers could fill a room with opinions on this couplet alone, although I would not want to be in attendance for either one, preferring my private musings.

And another basis for a homily:

A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.

These lines leapt from the page and into my soul, partly because they don't fit with the rest of the verses, but mostly because I felt a stinging condemnation, like Blake knew I'd find the poem eventually so put them in there just for me.  For years I thought truth was sufficient justification for saying anything.  One morning I woke in a cold sweat and realized I'd been living a lie.

And the close, with an insight that every missionary learns his first week in the field, sadly first, and then later with rejoicing:

God appears and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night.
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day?

I like poems that ask questions because that is how life reveals herself to me.  I'm neither a learned nor worthy critic, so will reply to Blake's question with a few doggerel couplets of my own, inspired perhaps by the early morning hour.

The morning sun illuminates
What blackened night eviscerates.
Your consciousness, the thoughts you keep,
Depends on when you choose to sleep.