Gascoyne also became a significant poet himself, writing original surrealist verse in his well-received second book of poems Man’s Life Is This Meat. By his third collection, however he had lost faith in surrealism, and began writing the mystical poems of an anguished Christian seeker. Elizabeth Jennings wrote, “I do not think … he really found his own voice or his own individual means of expression until he started writing the poems which appeared in the volume entitled Poems, 1937–42…”
The following poem is one of them, which was written in 1938.
Kyrie
Is man’s destructive lust insatiable? There is
Grief in the blow that shatters the innocent face.
Pain blots out clearer sense. And pleasure suffers
The trial thrust of death in even the bride’s embrace.
The black catastrophe that can lay waste our worlds
May be unconsciously desired. Fear masks our face;
And tears as warm and cruelly wrung as blood
Are tumbling even in the mouth of our grimace.
How can our hope ring true? Fatality of guilt
And complicated anguish confounds time and place;
While from the tottering ancestral house an angry voice
Resounds in prophecy. Grant us extraordinary grace,
O spirit hidden in the dark in us and deep,
And bring to light the dream out of our sleep.
The following is one version of a piece by Gascoyne from his New Collected Poems, although I’ve encountered a significantly different version elsewhere.
The Son of Man is in Revolt
The Son of Man is in revolt
Against the god of men.
The Son of God who took the fault
Of men away from them
To lay it in himself on God
Has nowhere now to rest God’s head
But in the heart of human solitude.
*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about David Gascoyne: first post.
Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.
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