The Priest and the Beast

Basudeb talks of dualism, two opposing polarities within us, in this poem, exclusively for Different Truths.

Melville’s Moby Dick,
Is an American Epic,
A great saga of Mankind in prose,
Presenting a Cosmic war,
Between the two military mights,
The good and the evil.

I ask my Other self,
What is Captain Ahab? A Christ figure?
An emblem of all and an absolute good?
My Other self says, yes. He is and He is definite,
He is the normal side of Man,
He is Blake’s benign and benevolent Lamb .

What is that Sperm Whale? Who the White Whale?
Is he Blake’s Tyger? Is it a blankness of Evil,
A giant force that will crush man’s joy of life,
An eternal enemy of Man? A cruel fate?
Truly an Epic, the war between the darkness,
And the light still presides over our life today.

In our own Self, live both a priest and a beast,
Together these two hostile forces co-exist,
Sometimes the beasts become omnipotent,
To undo all good the priests command,
Thus Syria, Afghanistan and some global pockets,
Are born killing thousands of people, a genocide.

The League of Nations, United Nations,
All we have formed, often Peace Missions,
Nothing will take the beast in our genes,
Unless we groom ourselves how to bridle,
Our own enemy hidden in mind, and to inspire,
Our priest within us to be stronger and stronger.

Photo from the Internet

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Basudeb Chakraborti

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