Whatever is will have no end

Whatever is will have no end
although denied by foe or friend
and this I say to friend and foe
as onward to the grave we go

The candle in my little room
gives light but will not bake the host
I share my certainty with Hume
The candle with the Holy Ghost.

A.R.D.Fairbairn

I suppose what I really like about this poem is the way it manages to keep on board the values both of Romanticism and of the Enlightenment. (My simple mind also likes the fact that it rhymes and scans). At the start of the twenty-first century the values of the Enlightenment are under concerted attack from some of the loonier children of romanticism. The poisonous certainty of Romanticism fuelled the fundamentalism of the People Of The Book, and Nazism, which made the Twentieth century such a jolly affair, and it is set to sabotage the third millenium as well. And yet one wants to save at least some romantics from the flames: a world without William Blake doesn't bear thinking about.

Rex Fairbairn is underregarded nowadays, like so many of the NZ poets of his generation. One reason why his reputation was always going to be vulnerable to eclipse was that he wrote too much, and often at too great length. That's not a problem here!

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