The Lord Gives, The Lord Takes Away

Just as Troilus’ ghost laughed at the littleness

of what preoccupied his earthly mind

My eyes captivated by the darkness of the night

catch the reflection of an indoor light

Will it come one day when intense suffering

will have metamorphosed into trifles and absurdities?

When the lit room behind and the feeble

glimmer ahead in darkness will be found inverted?

Will it come one day when my throat

will not be petrified, my heart frozen

nor my mind numbed?

When my soul has caught up with a body

tired of the loneliness and emptiness

provoked by the absence of all?

Just as Troilus’ ghost laughed at the triviality

and the transitory nature

of human concerns and desires,

Was this all a game of faith, testing our

ability to trust in promises that we

ideologically lived by and yet hadn’t

appropriated as our actual reality?

Was this all an opportunity for deconstruction

narratives, revisions and emendations,

as the storyline diverted from its initial angle?

Was this all a game of two cultures,

when gambling with the unknown

is spiced up by an overtly eager

temperament and an overthinking mind?

Just as Troilus’ ghost laughed at entangling

circumstances blinding the prospect of a realm

always delighting in its golden hour

How then face the master of time,

when too aware of one’s earthliness,

sand runs through one’s fingers as

soon as it touches one’s skin?

How then face what is to come when

the present and its meaninglessness

are too much to bear?

Was Sartre finally right, l’enfer c’est les autres?

How then embrace the blue without

tempering pain with escapism and distraction,

while praying alongside Herbert

“give one more thing, a grateful heart”?

Troilus’ ghost might as well have wept bitterly

in the night witnessing such

desolation paved by vanities

Whether with laughter or tears, I shall pronounce

in a shattered voice alongside Job:

The Lord gives,

The Lord takes away,

blessed be His name.

* * * * *

Dans ce poème, j’explore la réaction de Troilus (protagoniste du Troïlus et Criseyde de Geoffrey Chaucer) alors que son esprit monte au ciel et qu’il perçoit la vie sur terre de là-haut. Nos circonstances peuvent nous aveugler, nous cachant la vérité éternelle, la vérité que Dieu est amour, et qu’en lui il y a la plénitude, en lui nous pouvons être entier. Les émotions liées à nos circonstances peuvent être parfois écrasantes, mais comme tout ceux qui ont vécu avant nous ne cessent de nous témoigner, c’est une question de foi. En effet, ça concerne la façon dont nous répondant à nos propres circonstances par la foi.