06 October 2012

Can You Not, Thanks.

Jeremy Hunt, some say you're a --
very nice man really,
(irony)
but
interference
in a realm
that is so far removed from yours
is, simply,
refused:

womb belongs to woman
and she will never allow legislation
to become part of her decision.
Your supposedly elevated status
should never allow you to
invade
this most private of spheres.
You will find your approach blocked
by any who feel
their body
=
their choice.

5 comments:

Robert said...

Did you always think this way, or is it a recent opinion?

Typewriter said...

Hmm. There's underlying truth which is a common thread. There's also the idea that politics fuels poetry of a certain kind :) Might do the other side soon, but this was first.

Robert said...

So this is parody, then? If it is, then it's a good parody. It captures the smugness as well as the moral and intellectual bankruptcy which make the abortionist position so particularly loathsome.

I find it reassuring that this has no poetic qualities: it shows that anti-human poetry must necessarily fail qua poetry, which is a positive message. The form of expression of a quintessentially ugly sentiment cannot succeed in rendering it beautiful. I don't know if that is universally true or not, but I hope it is.

Typewriter said...

It's interesting that you have such strong feelings on a poem which was intended to capture strong feelings; in answer to your question, not quite a parody, no.

In the words of Wilde, the 'aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way.' I'm also reminded of 'Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.'

Robert said...

I do not agree with Wilde. The philosophy he was expressing was more beautifully encapsulated by Walter Pater in the conclusion of Essays on the Renaissance: "to burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life". By an interesting coincidence, I was thinking about this the other day. Pater expressed himself so thrillingly that his remarks have always stayed with me. I don't think his philosophy was meaningfully different from the prevailing attitudes of the postmodern epoch which have produced the moral wasteland we now inhabit, in which the concepts of good and evil are regarded with contempt and personal gain has become almost the sole motivator of action - an attitude which, amongst the rest, has given us the atrocity of institutionalised abortion, in my opinion the ultimate manifestation of our cultural degeneracy. But Pater argued his case in such powerful language that I could, and still can, see the beauty of it - precisely as he intended. It is important to recognise the crucial factor, which is that Pater, coming from a Victorian Oxford background, had a taste more fine and cultivated than anyone alive today (as Wilde may also have done, I don't know - he hid it well if so). That was the only way his philosophy of life could be made to seem palatable. Wilde referred to the "elect"; he recognised that such an attitude to life could never be permitted to spread to the general population. His was consciously an argument for cultural elitism, a salvific amorality of breeding, intellect and cultural status. I think our history has shown that the consequence of a moral vacuum existing among the elite, but not amongst the people, is that the civilization decays from the top down, until the whole thing is necrotic. As for whether there is really hope for such people, I think there is not. If there is any hope for any of us, it does not come in such a form.