Birth Through Tragedy

Birth Through Tragedy

 

When we say, “It’s a tragedy.”

What is the point we are making?

There are some raw emotions, certainly,

But it’s more than a heart that’s aching.

 

Is it just emotional pain?

Just sadness or anger that’s felt?

Or, an inability to explain,

That makes the world all around us melt?

 

When what we see doesn’t make sense,

And our senses want to embrace,

What our logic tells us is an offence,

And we confront chaos face to face…

 

This is what tragedy should mean:

A shock that puts into question

Everything that is though, felt, heard and seen--

Demanding our own reinvention.

 

It is like seeing water burn,

Or having fire quench your thirst:

A situation that calls us to spurn

What we hold as deepest, dearest, first…

 

A tragedy should be a push

To abandon, think, search. And find?

To admit what we find behind the bush*

Was hidden and found by our own mind.

 

It rends what is, was, ought and ought not.

If our response is mere sadness--

Or anger and rage that leaves us red hot--

Tragedy only creates madness.

 

A true tragedy is a push:

A forced eviction from a womb;

A birth into a cruel world, an ambush,

But into a world, not a tomb.

 

And in that world, we must create

What is our new reality and state,

Which will, in time, become a brand-new womb.

Only for us to be born again…

Through a new tragedy,

With all its cruelty and beauty.

 

 

 

 

 

* "When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding 'truth' within the realm of reason." --Frederich Nietzsche from On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense