Below is a link to a pdf file (103 Kb) of Two Face: Some Poems by DW Myatt from the years 1974-1979 CE.
Also below is a link to another pdf file (101 Kb) of another small collection of poems by DW Myatt, from the years 1974-2009 CE, entitled For The Cognoscenti.
Two Face: Some Poems by DW Myatt
A Brief Analysis of David Myatt’s Philosophy of The Numinous Way
Introduction: Mystic Philosophy of a Modern Gnostic
The Numinous Way is the name given, by David Myatt himself, to his own particular Weltanschauung, his own perspective about life, which he has expounded in a recent (April, 2009 AD) collection of essays entitled Empathy, Compassion, and Honour: The Numinous Way of Life, writing that these particular essays “represent the culmination of my own thinking, and thus supersede all other essays of mine about, or concerning, The Numinous Way, and what I, previously, called The Numinous Way of Folk Culture.” Thus, the majority of my references are to the chapters, and appendices, of this work (1).
Significantly, Myatt states that:
“As for The Numinous Way, I do now incline toward the view that this ethical Way of Life, which I have developed, is now independent of me, a complete philosophy of life, and can and should be judged as all such Ways, all such philosophies are judged, on their merits or their lack of them, independent of the life, and wanderings and mistakes, of those individuals who may have brought such Ways into being, or rather, who have presenced something of the numinous in the causal, just as the life of an artist, while it may or may not be interesting, does not or should not detract from or colour an artistic, aesthetic, judgement of his, or her, works of art.”
Myatt’s particular perspective, or philosophy of life – or apprehension, as Myatt himself calls it – is, in my view, fundamentally a mystical one. That is, it is based on a personal intuitive insight about, a personal awareness of, the nature of Reality. This personal insight is that “individual human beings, are a connexion to all other life, on this planet which is currently our home, and a connexion to the Cosmos itself.” (2)
According to Myatt, this awareness is that arising from empathy; more, precisely, from the faculty of empathy, which he explains is an awareness of, and a sympathy with, other living beings (3), and which he defines, in a somewhat technical way, as “a manifestation, an awareness, of our relation to acausality, and in particular as an awareness of the related and dependant nature of those beings which express or manifest or which presence acausal energy and which are thus described, in a causal way, as possessing life” (4). His other, more simple explanation, is of empathy, in relation to human beings, as “our ability to know, to be aware of, the feelings, the suffering, of others.” (5)
This mystical insight of Myatt’s led him, over a period of a decade, to develop and increasingly refine The Numinous Way, and this development and process of refinement was, according to him, inspired and aided by his own personal experiences and by his quest among, and experience of, the religions of the world. As he states (6), his conclusions are:
“The result of a four-decade long pathei mathos: the result of my many and diverse and practical (and, to many others, weird and strange) involvements (political, and otherwise), and my many and diverse and practical quests among the philosophies, Ways of Life, and religions, of the world. The Numinous Way is, in particular, the result of the often difficult process of acknowledging my many personal mistakes – many of which caused or contributed to suffering – and (hopefully) learning from these mistakes.”
These conclusions have led him to reject all the beliefs and views he formerly adhered to, and which he is publicly known for. Among the beliefs and views he has come to reject, as a result of what it is, I believe, accurate to describe as a life long gnostic search for knowledge, and wisdom (7), are National Socialism and its racialist policies, which he had practical experience of, and a personal involvement with, lasting many years.
As Myatt himself claims, his philosophy of The Numinous Way is emphatically apolitical, rejects the dogma prevalent in established religions; rejects nationalism, racialism and racial prejudice; emphasizes and embraces tolerance, and is fundamentally an individual way of life centered on the virtues of empathy, compassion and personal honor (8).
As Myatt states:
“There has been, for me, a profound change of emphasis, a following of the cosmic ethic of empathy to its logical and honourable conclusion, and thus a rejection of all unethical abstractions.” (9)
A Complete Philosophy of Life
In order to qualify as a complete, and distinct, philosophy – in order to be a Weltanschauung – a particular philosophical viewpoint should possess the following:
1) A particular ontology, which describes and explains the concept of Being, and beings, and our relation to them;
2) A particular theory of ethics, defining and explaining what is good, and what is bad;
3) A particular theory of knowledge (an epistemology); of how truth and falsehood can be determined;
It should also be able to give particular answers to questions such as “the meaning and purpose of our lives”, and explain how the particular posited purpose may or could be attained.
What follows is a brief, and introductory, analysis of how Myatt’s The Numinous Way deals with each of the above topics.
Ontology
Myatt, in the essay Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way, states that, according to The Numinous Way, “there are two types of being, differentiated by whether or not they possess, or manifest, what is termed acausal energy”. That is, he introduces the concept of a causal Universe, and an acausal Universe, which together form “the Cosmos”, or Reality itself.
This causal Universe is the phenomenal world known to use via our five senses, and knowledge of this causal Universe is obtained through conventional sciences based upon practical observation (10). The acausal Universe is known to us via our faculty of empathy, since the acausal is the genesis of that particular type of energy which makes physical matter “alive” (11). That is, according to Myatt, all living beings are nexions, which are places – regions (or, one might say, “bodies”) – in the causal Universe where acausal energy is present, or manifests, or, to use Myatt’s term, is presenced. Hence, according to Myatt, “The Numinous Way adds empathy to the faculties by which we can perceive, know, and understand the Cosmos… Empathy is an essential means to knowing and understanding Life, which Life includes human beings…” (12)
In his earlier essay, Acausal Science: Life and The Nature of the Acausal, Myatt gives a little more detail as to the nature of acausal being, that is, the nature the acausal itself and of acausal energy.
Ethics
The ethics of Myatt’s Numinous Way derive from empathy, and in the section Ethics and the Dependant Nature of Being of the chapter Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way it is stated that:
“The faculty of empathy – and the conscious understanding of the nature of Reality – leads to a knowing, an understanding, of suffering. Part of suffering is that covering-up which occurs when a causal denoting is applied to living beings, and especially to human beings, which denoting implies a judgement (a pre-judgement) of such life according to some abstract construct or abstract value, so that the “worth” or “value” of a living-being is often incorrectly judged by such abstract constructs or abstract values.”
From a knowing and understanding of suffering, compassion arises, and:
“Empathy is thus, for The Numinous Way, the source of ethics, for what is good is considered to be that which manifests empathy and compassion and honour, and thus what alleviates, or what ceases to cause, suffering: for ourselves, for other human beings, and for the other life with which we share this planet. Hence, what is unethical, or wrong, is what causes or what contributes to or which continues such suffering.”
Furthermore, Myatt defines honor (or, more precisely, personal honor) as an ethical means to aid the cessation of suffering (13) and thus as “a practical manifestation of empathy: of how we can relate to other people, and other life, in an empathic and compassionate way”.
In addition, it is worth noting that Myatt views what he calls ‘abstractions’ as immoral, since abstraction obscures, or cover-ups, the essence, the being – the reality – of beings themselves. That is, such abstractions undermine, or replace, or distort, empathy, and thus distance us from life, from our true human nature, and lead us to identify with such abstractions instead of identifying with, sympathizing with, living beings. (14)
Epistemology
In Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way, Myatt writes:
“For The Numinous Way, truth begins with a knowing of the reality of being and Being – part of which is a knowing of the dependant nature of living beings.”
Furthermore,
“There is… a fundamental and important distinction made, by The Numinous Way, between how we can, and should, perceive and understand the causal, phenomenal, physical, universe, and how we can, and should, perceive and understand living beings. The physical world can be perceived and understood as: (1) existing external to ourselves, with (2) our limited understanding of this ‘external world’ depending for the most part upon what we can see, hear or touch: on what we can observe or come to know via our senses; with (3) logical argument, or reason, being a most important means to knowledge and understanding of and about this ‘external world’, and a means whereby we can make reasonable assumptions about it, which assumptions can be refuted or affirmed via observation and experiment; and (4) with the physical Cosmos being, of itself, a reasoned order subject to laws which are themselves understandable by reason. In this perception and understanding of the causal, phenomenal, inanimate universe, concepts, denoting, ideas, forms, abstractions, and such like, are useful and often necessary.” (15)
Hence, Myatt conceives of there being two distinct types of knowing. That of the causal Universe, which derives from our senses and from practical science, and that of living beings, which derives from our empathy with such living beings, from a knowing that we are not separate from those living beings, but only one manifestation of that acausal, living, energy which connects all living beings, sentient and otherwise. (16) This second type of knowing derives from empathy, and is one means whereby we can apprehend the acausal, which is the matrix, The Unity, of connexions which is all life, presenced as living-beings in the causal. (17)
According to Myatt:
“The error of conventional philosophies – the fundamental philosophical error behind abstractionism – is to apply causal perception and a causal denoting to living being(s).” (18)
Praxeology
The primary goal is seen as living in such a way that we, as individuals, cease to cause suffering to other life. This means us using, and developing empathy, and thus changing – reforming – ourselves.
“How can we develope this faculty [of empathy]? How can we reform ourselves and so evolve? The answer of The Numinous Way is that this is possible through compassion, empathy, gentleness, reason, and honour: through that gentle letting-be which is the real beginning of wisdom and a manifestation of our humanity. To presence, to be, what is good in the world – we need to change ourselves, through developing empathy and compassion, through letting-be, that is, ceasing to interfere, ceasing to view others (and “the world”) through the immorality of abstractions, and ceasing to strive to change or get involved with what goes beyond the limits determined by personal honour.” (19)
Why should we pursue such a goal? Myatt answers, in a rather mystical and gnostic way, that:
“Empathy, compassion, and a living by honour, are a means whereby we increase, or access for ourselves, acausal energy – where we presence such energy in the causal – and whereby we thus strengthen the matrix of Life, and, indeed, increase Life itself. Thus, when we live in such an ethical way we are not only aiding life here, now, in our world, in our lifetime, we are also aiding all future life, in the Cosmos, for the more acausal energy we presence, by our deeds, our living, the more will be available not only to other life, here – in our own small causal Time and causal Space – but also, on our mortal death, available to the Cosmos to bring-into-being more life. Thus will we aid – and indeed become part of – the very change, the very evolution of the life of the Cosmos itself.”
The Acausal and The Cosmic Being
Myatt’s concept of what he terms the acausal is central to understanding his philosophy of The Numinous Way. He conceives of this acausal as a natural part of the Cosmos, which Cosmos he defines as the unity of the physical, causal, Universe, and of the acausal Universe. This acausal Universe has an a-causal geometry and an a-causal time, and there exists, in this acausal Universe, a-causal energy of a type quite different from the physical energy of causal Space-Time, which causal energy is known to us and described by causal sciences such as Physics. (20)
This acausal energy is, according to Myatt, what animates physical matter and makes it alive, and thus he conceives as life in the causal, physical, Universe as a place – a nexion – where acausal energy is “presenced” (manifested) in causal Space-Time. Hence, all living beings are, for Myatt, a connection, a nexion, to the acausal itself, and thus all living beings are connected to each other. This connectively is felt, revealed to us, as human beings, through empathy (21). Compassion is knowing, and acting upon, this connectivity of life, since “our very individuality is a type of abstraction in itself, and thus something of an illusion, for it often obscures our relation to other life…” (22)
The acausal is thus the matrix of connectivity, where all life exists in the immediacy of the moment, and where causal abstractions, based on finite causal thinking, have no meaning and no value.
Myatt conceives of what he terms a Cosmic Being, which is regarded as the Cosmos in evolution, becoming sentient through the evolution of living beings. That is, the Cosmic Being is itself a type of living entity, manifest (or “incarnated”) in all living beings, including ourselves, and Nature. (23)
“The Cosmic Being….. is not perfect, nor omniscient, not God, not any human-manufactured abstraction. That is, it is instead a new kind of apprehension of Being: a Cosmic one, based upon empathy, and an apprehension which takes us far beyond conventional theology and ontology.” (24)
Thus, this Cosmic Being is not to be viewed in a religious, theological, way, as some kind of deity, for we are part of this Being, as this Being is us and all other life, changing, evolving, coming-into-consciousness (25).
Pathei Mathos
One phrase which frequently occurs in Myatt’s writings about his Numinous Way – and which he often uses in his private correspondence and his autobiographical essays – is the Greek term πάθει μάθος. Myatt, in his own translation of The Agamemnon by Aeschylus, translates this as learning from adversity. Pathei Mathos is how Myatt describes his own strange personal journey, his gnostic search for knowledge, wisdom and meaning, and his ultimate rejection of the various beliefs, ideologies, and religions, he studied and embraced in the course of this four decade long journey.
A large part of this learning from adversity is, for him, firstly an acknowledgment of his personal errors in adhering to and identifying with various “abstractions” – which he admits caused or contributed to suffering – and, secondly, the sometimes painful and difficult personal process of learning from these mistakes and thus changing one’s outlook and beliefs in an ethical way.
As Myatt states:
“In essence, there was, for me, pathei mathos. Due to this pathei mathos, I have gone far beyond any and all politics, and beyond conventional religion and theology toward what I believe and feel is the essence of our humanity, manifest in empathy, compassion, personal love and personal honour. Hence, I cannot in truth be described by any political or by any religious label, or be fitted into any convenient category, just as no -ism or no -ology can correctly describe The Numinous Way itself, or even the essence of that Way. Therefore, I believe it is incorrect to judge me by my past associations, by my past involvements, by some of my former effusions, for all such things – all the many diverse such things – were peregrinations, part of sometimes painful often difficult decades-long process of learning and change, of personal development, of interior struggle and knowing, which has enabled me to understand my many errors, my multitude of mistakes, and – hopefully – learn from them.” (26)
In addition, he does not make any claims for his Numinous Way, other than it represents his own personal conclusions about life.
“The Numinous Way is but one answer to the questions about existence; it does not have some monopoly on truth, nor does it claim any prominence, accepting that all the diverse manifestations of the Numen, all the diverse answers, of the various numinous Ways and religions, have or may have their place, and all perhaps may serve the same ultimate purpose – that of bringing us closer to the ineffable beauty, the ineffable goodness, of life; that of transforming us, reminding us; that of giving us as individuals the chance to cease to cause suffering, to presence the good, to be part of the Numen itself.” (27)
Conclusion
This short overview of Myatt’s Numinous Way reveals it as a comprehensive and, in my view, rather original, moral philosophy with an ethics and a praxeology which, while having some resemblance to those of Buddhism, are quite distinct by reason of (a) how Myatt relates, and defines, empathy and honor, and how such honor allows for the employment, in certain situations, of reasonable (“honorable”) force (28), and (b) how Myatt views human life in terms of the acausal, and as a means for us to “reform and evolve” ourselves.
The goal of The Numinous Way is seen as us, as individuals, becoming aware of and having empathy with all life, and this involves us using and developing our faculty of empathy, being compassionate, and thus increasing the amount of life, of acausal energy, in the Cosmos, leading to not only the evolution of life, but also to a cosmic sentience, which we, when we are empathic, compassionate and honorable, are part of and which we can become aware of.
In addition, as his many autobiographical essays and his published letters reveal (29), The Numinous Way – as outlined in the recent compilation The Numinous Way of Life: Empathy, Compassion, and Honour – has no relation whatsoever to any of Myatt’s previously held political views and beliefs. Indeed, Myatt is quite clear that he regards both race, and “the folk”, as abstractions which, like all abstractions, obscure and undermine the numinous and which are detrimental to empathy and compassion and, ultimately, unethical and therefore dishonorable. (30) Thus, and rather confusingly given the terminology, this new apolitical Numinous Way – with its emphasis on personal, ethical, change and the cessation of suffering – is completely distinct from his much earlier, now rejected, philosophy which he first called “Folk Culture” and then called The Numinous Way of Folk Culture.
Thus, The Numinous Way, as expounded recently and as developed by Myatt in the past two years, is not only a rejection of all of those previously held beliefs and views of his, but possibly also, as he himself claims, a new moral way founded on his own learning from his experiences and errors.
JR Wright
Oxford
April 29, 2009 AD
1) This work (currently an e-text in both html and pdf formats) appears in some editions under the alternative title The Numinous Way of Life: Empathy, Compassion, and Honour. In addition to citing this work, I have, on occasion, referred to recent private correspondence between Myatt and myself (both written, and e-mail) where he elucidates certain matters in response to a particular question, or questions, of mine.
Myatt admits that, after his conversion to Islam, he did continue to develop and refine this Numinous Way, spurred on by his experiences in the Muslim world, and it was these experiences – and his study of Islam – which significantly contributed to him expunging what he called the “unethical and dishonourable abstractions of both race and the folk from this philosophy.” Private e-mail from Myatt to JRW, January 7, 2009
2) An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life
3) In Compassion, Empathy and Honour: The Ethics of the Numinous Way
4) Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way
6) Introduction, Empathy, Compassion, and Honour: The Numinous Way of Life
7) A Gnostic is someone who seeks gnosis - wisdom and knowledge; someone involved in a life-long search,a quest, for understanding, and who more often than not views the world, or more especially ordinary routine life, as often mundane and often as a hindrance. In my view, this is a rather apt description of Myatt.
8) Refer to Frequently Asked Questions About The Numinous Way and An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life
9) Introduction, Empathy, Compassion, and Honour: The Numinous Way of Life
10) Refer to the section Ontology and The Numinous Way in the chapter A Brief Analysis of The Immorality of Abstraction, and also to Myatt’s earlier essay Acausal Science: Life and The Nature of the Acausal which is referenced in that chapter.
11) A Brief Analysis of The Immorality of Abstraction
12) A Brief Analysis of The Immorality of Abstraction
13) An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life
14) Refer to Myatt’s recent essay, A Change of Perspective, dated 2454949
15) A Brief Analysis of The Immorality of Abstraction
16) Refer to An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life and Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way and also Presencing The Numen In The Moment
17) A Change of Perspective. Also, private e-mail from Myatt to JRW, April 23, 2009
18) A Brief Analysis of The Immorality of Abstraction
19) An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life
20) Acausal Science: Life and The Nature of the Acausal
21) Private e-mail from Myatt to JRW, January 29, 2009
22) An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life. See also The Numinous Way and Life Beyond Death
23) Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way. Also, private e-mail from Myatt to JRW, February 2, 2009
24) Ontology, Ethics and The Numinous Way
25) Private e-mail from Myatt to JRW, February 2, 2009 and private letter from Myatt to JRW, which he dated 23.iv.09 (CE)
26) Presencing The Numen In The Moment
27) The Empathic Essence
28) Refer to An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life and also The Principles of Numinous Law
29) Among his dozens of recent autobiographical essays are the following:
So Many Tears
Love, Deities and God: Redemption and The Numinous Way
An Allegory of Pride and Presumption
One Simple Numinous Answer
The Empathic Essence
I have collected some of his personal letters in a pdf file entitled The Private Letters of David Myatt, Part 1
30) Refer to Frequently Asked Questions About The Numinous Way, where Myatt writes that “such a concept as “the folk” now has no place in The Numinous Way…” See also The Development of The Numinous Way and Other Questions and especially Questions About Race, The Folk, and The Numinous Way where it is stated:
You have recently written that the practical essential basis for The Numinous Way is a return to small clan-based communities. How, therefore, do such small probably rural and very low-tech communities fit in with your vision of Space Exploration and colonization? For surely such exploration requires high-tech industries and the resources and wealth of a modern nation-State?
A return to a more human way of living – based upon small communities and the law of personal honour – is indeed central to The Numinous Way, which Way rejects as unethical the abstraction of the modern nation-State and the un-numinous ways of living which go with such an abstraction.
As mentioned in The Clan, Culture, and The Numinous Way
As for Space Exploration, this certainly does, currently, in its present form, involve sophisticated technology and certainly requires the industry and wealth and resources of large nation-States.
However, current Space technology is very cumbersome and quite primitive, and – using this type of technology – it will probably be another hundred years before there are large, self-sufficient, colonies on Mars and the Moon. In addition, this technology – even allowing for some advancements in the next fifty or so years – is wholly unsuitable to stellar and Galactic exploration, given the distances involved. After fifty years of manned Spaceflight, there are currently only around five or six individuals, at any one time, living in Space – and they live there for only some months at a time, not permanently; that is, no one yet lives permanently in Space.
Furthermore, due to its complexity and cost, Space Exploration does not currently have a very high priority among those pursuing it, especially as countries such as America prefer to spend money, and use their resources, to maintain their military and political hegemony, and this low priority is unlikely to change in the near future, given current policies and the current ethos that dominates the West and now most of the rest of the world, partly due to Western influence. Indeed, Space Exploration may well have an ever lower priority in the future, given the social, economic and political problems that may well arise.
What is required is something which is technologically simple, relatively cheap (by current standards), and which does not require the vast resources of a modern industrialized country. Currently, Space technology is reliant upon expensive, costly, mostly expendable rockets to take craft above and beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, and even were another type of Earth-to-Space propulsion devised, the problems of interstellar distance, and of costly spacecraft production, still remain.
Personally, it is my view that an entirely new type of technology is required, and it may well be that this will be an acausal technology, in contrast to our existing causal technologies. Such an acausal technology – based upon acausal energy in contrast to causal energy – is still, of course, futuristic.
You are referring, presumably, to your concept of acausal Space-Time and acausal energy, which you outlined in your work The Physics of Acausal Energy?
Yes, and it is such an acausal technology which is certainly compatible with small clan-based communities, and which does not require the wealth and organized industries of modern industrialized nation-States, and which thus does not exploit and denude the resources of, nor pollute, this planet, Earth, which is currently our home.
As mentioned elsewhere:
However, given that such numinous cultures are small – and may often be rural in nature – how can this Galactic, extra-terrestrial, development be achieved, especially since a numinous culture would most certainly not involve large national or supra-national industries, as it would not be reliant upon the usury, and the supra-national trade and commerce, which all modern States and nations depend upon?
It could and should be achieved by means of the development of a new acausal science, and the development of a new type of technology, based on acausal energy. For a numinous culture – and all empathic human beings – are, both in principle and in practice, opposed to the exploitation of the Earth, and the exploitation of the living beings of the Earth, which exploitation is inseparable from capitalism and the modern industries, and technologies, deriving from, and dependant, upon such capitalism, on such supra-national commerce, and on other causal un-numinous abstractions.
The basis for the new acausal technology is the science of causal and acausal, of the apprehension of acausal energy emanating from the acausal universe by means of living nexions.” The Clan, Culture, and The Numinous Way
Do you have any thoughts on what timescale we’re talking about in developing this new acausal technology?
My assumption is that it may take many decades for even the foundations to be developed – that is, for acausal energy to experimented with; for machines which generate such energy to be developed; and for new acausal machines to be developed and used as a means of propulsion for Spacecraft.
Thus, it may well be a century of more before Spacecraft using acausal energy are developed. But, it could occur in a much shorter time, just as it might not occur at all.
What do you mean by saying it might occur at all?
Currently, my theory of acausal energy – and of such acausal energies being the “extra something” that animates physical matter and makes it alive – is just a theory, and a rather speculative one at that, based on certain axioms. It is an interesting theory, certainly, but might not be a valid one: that is, one that becomes useful, and the basis for a new technology, because practical experiments validate it to some extent. Indeed, practical experiments might just as well show that the theory is – or aspects of it are – untenable.
What about your other, concomitant, theory, of a technology based not on acausal energy, machines generating such energy, but instead on living machines?
That is not especially a theory, but rather a speculative extrapolation based on the axioms, of causal and acausal, which axioms form the foundation of the theory of acausal energy.
As I mentioned in a very early essay – my first exposition of the theory -
” One way of capturing the acausal is to develop a truly organic technology – that is, to grow living machines from organic material. Such an organic technology would be totally different from the current concern with “molecular electronics” and “nanotechnology” because these concerns still depend on manufactured, discrete and dead electronic components which themselves are based on descriptions of causal matter using causal time.
Electronics, for example, is a means of describing the changes of a particular type of causal matter – electrons – over causal time, and enables components and circuits to be built to alter and control the flow of electrons. Thus, for example, using organic ‘molecules’ to store data is not a genuine organic technology, because: (i) such molecules are manufactured to do one or two specific, inert, tasks; (ii) such molecules are not basically alive as independent changing organisms – that is, not possessed of the acausal; and (iii) they would still be somehow connected to, and dependent upon, electronic components.
David Myatt
A man’s fate is a man’s fate
And life is but an illusion
How is your husband? -
The face in the street smiled.
He died, last week
While a small hospital
Of no repute was bombed
Every writer has their cause
Where words without the warmth
A Winter sun secures
Ensnare:
No experience drips, as frost
From a leaf when warm breath
Casts itself from itself
And the child-man smiles
Atop the bleak sequestered hill
Where snow folds with silence:
Every bomb is a clue
While children cry
A tyrant’s whim was only a whim
Since he at least must die
But an idea’s fate is an idea’s fate:
They seldom die
Lying like pain in wait
The old woman cries
While she lies in her bed awake:
For sixty years her care carried her;
There was always the house,
The children, the neat garden trimmed by a hedge.
Each Sunday would be real
And they would sit, enjoying the warmth
Of their world.
He died, last week
Before the leeches sucked their house“In a Home” the face like her youth said
“It is warm, and in Winter we will come.”
Oh my daughter what have you done…
Every person has their Cause
When deeds drip like blood
Just as every City is a snare
Can you remember you who skirted
That path and walked like Leonidas
Once,
Can you remember the warmth
That drew Cities from Stone?
Is there no forgiving for the dreams
Of our past? No remembering of skulls
Cracked to help those cracking
To remember a question, just one question
About Life?
There is no goal worthy
For which a City might live:
But, I remember the City
We might build to the stars
DW Myatt
Here I have stopped
Because only Time goes on within my dream:
Yesterday I was awoken, again,
And she held me down
With her body warmth
Until, satisfied, I went alone
Walking
And trying to remember:
A sun in a white clouded sky
Morning dawn yellow
Sways the breath that, hot, I exhale tasting of her lips.
The water has cut, deep, into
The estuary bank
And the mallard swims against the flow -
No movement, only effort.
Nearby – the foreign ship which brought me
Is held by rusty chains
Which, one day and soon
And peeling them like its paint,
Must leave
Here I shall begin again
Because Time, at last, has stopped
Since I have remembered the dark ecstasy
Which brought that war-seeking Dream
DW Myatt
Weary and sleep inclined
I watched the pools of rain
Upon a roof below a corridor
White, quiet and quite empty.A calmness of concentration came
As I aimed and made the kill, again.
There, a bleeding body
While, somewhere, trees buds were bursting
With the Spring.
I had killed, knitting in space-time
A synchronicity since it was only
One family’s loss
But civilization’s gain.
The choice was never hard
Since Thought can never act
And in Action without Thought
Lies a perfect bliss.
But the Dragon stayed
While only I moved on:
They – the politicians – could still cry
For they forget our memories,
The things that we did in their name.
Yet our eyes betray our loss
For we few who survived are forever
And always
Alone.
DW Myatt
One Grief
The worst and the best – these feelings of love:
Great, profound, best in their beginning
Yet worst with its ending
When we pace our small room
As outside the warm Sun of Spring appears
From cloud that brought such an early morning
Rain.
Now, we look out toward where those flowers of Spring
Push upwards from the plush green bank
Beside the lawn that I trimmed
Only one month ago
For the first time
This year.
Beyond, sunlight caught,
Those hills whose treeful slopes
Are greener now that I am sad, sadder, saddened by a grief born
From her losing:
Such life, around – such promise filling this air
With song
As birds proclaim both territory and pride
While I, Bach-hearing, resist resist resist
That temptation to kneel
As dark anguish heavily descends to cover such life as was my life:
For there is no God now to help as when I the monk
Toiled with hands, feelings, desires – until Thought surprised me
With the perfume of a woman
And shook me to take me far from the Monk’s Garden, the cloister, that warm Summer
Of warmful Sun -
Took me, far beyond myself
To where a female deity
Was born.
But, yes, there are tears now, as if the centuries, calling
Held me with the cries of those who long before my birth
Had suffered, cried, mourned, and died -
To where some future peaceful place, Sun-warmed, and rural as an English Summer,
Waits:
If only – if only I, we, were there
In that Paradise serene
Where even my desire, my yearning, becomes stilled
As it was not stilled with her
As I restless even beyond myself despite my best most noble hopes
Filled her with sadness, sometimes,
Until the slim thread holding us in love thinned and broke
Breaking her down in a sadness of grief, bent over her bed
Those hours when words failed as words fail
That day of rain and Sun where light from her window beheld her clinging
To the sheets of her bed, her pillow wet with tears.
There was, is, nothing for me to do now
I am sorry, so sorry
But live – or try to live
Remembering: for the centuries, calling
Hold me with the cries of those who long before my birth
Have suffered, cried, mourned, and died,
Thus urging me with such remembering to make some goodful godful use
Of the time remaining, here,
Far from that un-causal Paradise
Which might – should – be ours
One day
When the crying, our hurting,
Stops
DW Myatt
Here I Am, Waiting
And the thin crescent moon
Disappears.
Those were the moments of hope – of excuses
As to why she did not call
But the hours, the slow hours, dragged them away
Until he was left, alone, bent, desperate but not desperate
Because unwilling even then to fully believe
His loss.
He loved her so much; he had loved her so much -
She, of the weeks, months, of passionate new love -
And he held, again, her card, reading, reading until the tears came:
What was there left? Where was the future they shared, deeply
In those weeks when three decades of mutual sorrow, loneliness, hope
Came together through embracing arms, kisses
And that intimacy of touch?
Where the joyous desire that left him trembling
When he had stood at her door, waiting,
And she, arriving, threw her arms around him
Holding him so close with her passion, her love,
That he closed his eyes in tears knowing, knowing, his dreams were there
Embodied within her flesh?
Where now the promise promising so much that never was
Never now could be
Fulfilled.
For she was gone, taken, killed, by an accident of life
As he became taken enfolded by sorrow
Until, broken, the life left him
To leave only the shell, only the physical shell
Longing for death.
What would, could, should he do?
Only exist, ambling, alone, in some wood, on some hill,
Seeking no comfort and finding no comfort, uncaring of himself -
Except when the hills, the clouds, the Sun, the trees
Their life
Came unto him as he the bearded tramp waited
For death,
For then for a moment but only a moment he might be at peace
Amid the life that was their life.
DW Myatt
Decoration by Bombs is an Art
There is a comfort here, a Winter sea breeze,
A quiet time to mould from present possibilities
Future patterns
While each will creates by being just a will
Each possibility of Thought:
There is no being that is real
No authentic Way
While the act that might have linked
All presents to their past
Becomes enfeebled
Like waves breaking on a beach
Decoration by bombing is an Art
And for each thought
That is a connection between our present
And our past
Ten thousand fruitful deadEach tree rots, in the ambience of Time:
For each forest a silence
For each tree its allotted span;
What forest furnished your fuel
What soil your wheat?There is good in all
The Buddhist says:
But, hell, that those bastards burn,
They started itFor decoration by bombing is an Art
All heroes die
That others might forget
And, while blood spurts,
A financier crawls across a perfumed lawn:
Berlin, Paris, Rome – it makes no difference, let others die! -
The same smile
The same golden god
Once, each people knew their gods
But now are too bored for gods
Or too relieved
Dear lady, how elegant
You look: so many jewels.
Give them a spectacle, some sports,
A passion to bleed their brains to death
For each dross, each pitcher of dross
A thousand helping hands
Keen smelling rats the lot
While the words that might have
Unpossessed those possessed
Are lost
Buried by blast and blood:
Decoration by bombing is an Art
There is a comfort here
That only war itself will break
As there is a passion among those possessed
By ideas that are not their ideas
As gutless financiers are possessed by their god.
But who will break the Seal
That delivers us to ourselves?
Little Esther’s plight made millions
And made even more men sick:
Ten thousand years, for this?
There is a comfort here
As Destiny seems doomed by The Lie.
But even seas change
Given time
DW Myatt
In The Valley
In the valley each rock
Is reduced by rain -
It runs, as small stones
Which will be soil
As I and all that I carry
Will be dead.
Was this valley a hill
Before water weathered
And each sheep trail was worn
Between fern and heather
And steep fern?
There are no people, today,
No noise lying like the dead crow
Wormed:
But there are gods,
If one knows where to look
And can tread the steep slopes
Of this hill.
Every road intrudes
Upon slow thinking rock.
Who tastes the silence that lies
As each Summer’s green
Upon the broken rocks of rain?
Here, near Narnell’s Rock
Where Thor’s hammer struck
Many a startled tree
And where dead men lie like seeds
Waiting,
Is neither day nor sun
Rain nor rock -
There is only the essence that exists
Because essence must:
There are no answers
Because no questions can exist -
Just as I am the rock which is me.
Yet there are gods, still,
If one knows where to look
And can climb the steep slopes
Of this hill
DW Myatt
(Written c. 1984)
In A Foreign Land
Hot, this sun while it breaks
As I sit quite still
Beneath cloud
On a white bench watching
Flies spiral for shade.
My head is at peace
While the body waits
In this Park
Where each shade of Summer green
Becomes real in this light
And trees speak, slowly,
Of their fears of being
Half alive:
Around
The chanted tuneless hymns
To the god of Noise.
I met this god, once:
I was young, inexperienced, while he
Tall and unspeaking
Glowered
Pointing to the deaths, the madness,
He had caused.
And I: I smiled, a little sad,
And walked away to seek
The human warmth
Of love.
For years, a war in my head
While I saught to find
A dream:
She was never real, my dream
But there was magick, I found
In sitting silent
While beams of Sun become filtered
And fractured through leaves:
A joy in watching while clouds form
And break, casting
In their myriad ways
This Sun’s gift of life.
There is ecstasy in walking
High upon hills while wind cries
Or thunders:
No suffering, except hunger,
While I wait for my Dark Daughters
Of Earth;
No pain of dreams destroyed.
Now there is rain to make me
Take up my sack and walk
As a wanderer in creaking boots
To where the Spirits of my waiting Woods
Will sigh:
Without his dreams,
He would be nothing
And I shall smile while, hot,
The Summer Sun breaks briefly
To dry my rain-soaked back
DW Myatt
(Written c. 1978)
Apple Blossom in May
There is a reality about Spring
When grass grows green with the sun:
Days lengthen bringing the warmth
That reassures and one is pleased
To run a hand where wind moves
And blossoms have been blown:
Every hour is unique
When rain stops.
In the town – three hills
And a valley to the left -
Music slithers from a shop
While people rush,
Gathering.
A drill strikes stone
Where youths gather
Sneering at people who pass.
There is a pleasure about Spring
When free grass grows in the sun,
A slowness when wind rushes tree:
Nearby
The curlew and lark
Where sun glints
Upon rain sodden earth:
How are you today, Mr Hughes?
Oh not so bad, you know -
Better for the sun.
Aye, will dry the ground
So we can seed.
Over the fields -
White clouds making faces
In the sun
DW Myatt
(Written c.1979 CE)
