A Poem

I guess anyone having a really winning week might want to avoid my more sincere blogs at the moment! But on a similar theme to Wednesday's thoughts about failure... (coz it's great to be so upbeat!)

There's a lyric in a Jason Robert Brown song:
"When people think I'm failing, they never understand that temporary setbacks are part of what I planned..."

But if you're really in the mood for some profundity...
My incredible drama school teacher Ian Ricketts (aka: the yoda of GSA) in all his wisdom sent me this poem about a year ago for seemingly no reason whatsoever. It's wonderfully wise and very beautiful and I don't think he'd mind at all me sharing it with you.

How much is owed to suffering we avoid,
both pain and implication stab
before we can assemble the defence
and wherever, to whomever, it may be
it occupies, preoccupies, our consciousness.

The keep is manned by foreigners,
inscrutable, remorseless, humourless
and strange; unthinkable we could
absorb them as our own and yet
in time we do, the hourly knock,
the uniform we recognise in silhouette,
the tread and the habitual smell
become familiar.

Exchange is first in anger, pain and disbelief
invasion happened undeserved and
unprovoked; it came mid-afternoon
a first warm sun upon the face, or on
a morning when the pattern of routine
seemed firm, from first encounter
with the early Greek to vistas
unimaginable ahead.

But there it is, it came
and then, by stealth, this hurt
ordains our taste, our values
and our government, grows
in our gardens, bearing wit
and even shapes the skill
for which intent remains to serve
that yet more subtle cause
for which we breathe,
for which we came.

By Ian Ricketts