It Is Harder For Us Poem by Harry St Vincent Beechey

It is harder for us

Self-alienated by artifacts

Surrounded by Things

Concreted imaginings

But

In a brushwood hut on a misty mountain

And willows drooping

And stark bamboos

Thrusting to the sky

Or bending to the wind

With freshet streams feeding the waterfall

A half-heard thunder

Minute droplets

Breeze-borne

Softening the air

There

Where the slow rotating seasons do not Tick or Tock

Whilst not easy

One might

(Once might)

Attune oneself to that eternal tune

And even single out ones own small note

With humble joy to see what part it plays

In that great symphony

But now it is harder for us

To see we are not other

And the ego epidemic spreads unchecked

And "Man against Nature1' syndrome betrays our sickness

And parasitic we destroy our host

Bodyworld

World body

As if

As it were

The brain

Denying the body

Seeks to behead itself



And it's a far sad cry

From where

In better times

A sage could commune

In an ecology so obvious

That the word remained unspoken

And it is harder for us

The music drowned in the clatter

Of artifactual modernity

To hear eternity

Above the endless chatter.

Yes

It is harder

For US

But Listen

HARDER!

H.St.V.B.1971

Published CONTEMPA #3