Isaac Tang – Poet, Author, Composer

THE HUMAN PARADOX

Or, A Grave Contemplation on the Current World

Preamble: Of all my poems, this piece of blank verse is one of my favourite. It is, in my humble opinion, both aesthetic and deeply philosophical, and draws inspiration from my favourite metaphysical poets. Moreover, despite being written in the year 2017, it still has great relevance to the world we currently live in, especially after recent news of escalating conflict. If you would like to know more about my poetry, please see here.

Each human is a planet: draped with clouds

A-flash with lightning midst arterial forests,

And made of cells as numerous as the leaves

That flourish in the tropics, and more varied

In all their constellated aggregations.

Should one become the size of molecules,

What scenes of glory shall await him there?

To sail the branching straits of the Red Sea,

To gaze on towering, grand lamellar spirals

And slender spongy bone, and hyaline glass –

Science stands breathless in awe and exhaustion,

Wondering how beauty has with mystery

Joined hands in labyrinthine intricacy,

Eluding, like a vapour through the hand,

The clutches of a thousand libraries,

For textbooks only have the iceberg’s tip,

The shiny seashell washed up on the shore –

A human breathes, it moves, it speaks, it thinks,

Yet ignorant of how a million steps

Cascade in order, one after the other,

Or how a million different sets of these

Are carried out in perfect synchrony;

Its harmony would prove to be a rival

To ev’n the fabled music of the spheres,

And render all the counterpoint of Bach

Pale in comparison. – Such is a human:

A planet of sheer loveliness, God-breathed,

A parcelled treasure, glimpse of the divine…

So would it always be, if all would orbit

Around the sun, but humans tear away

Into the cold and dark, where they have spun

Their own large circle, and set out their seasons:

There sounds the trump of war, the cry of death,

The laughter of oppressors, tears of slaves.

How strange – that all the cells within the human

Should work in such elaborate fashion,

In networks so connected and refined,

To charge such brutish asteroid collisions,

Or energise the riotous hedonist

In its intoxicated self-destruction,

Or to be wasted on so many people

Whose time will float, in idleness, away.

Of people such as these, there is no lack,

For there are multitudes, vast as the sea;

How shall sincere and virtuous ones escape

Their gravity? Alas, behold man’s swiftness

In readying their own annihilation;

Indeed, the galaxies in their procession

To entropy are not as keen and rushed.

Unhappy race – whose great and mighty minds

Suffer delusion from some sheets of paper,

Some blocks of metal, and some drops of oil.

Look, yellow gas is scattered through the sky

To suffocate defenceless families,

And bombs shall shower on the stricken land,

One hundred deaths for every one explosion –

Gone is the clockwork of each individual,

Gone are the limbs, the lungs, the heart, the brain,

Gone are the precious gifts, the breath of life,

Gone in a minute – what a thousand years

Could not discover, or explain, or learn,

All shattered, ruined, burnt up, melted down

Into the quiet, tearless dust of earth –

For humans did not know what they were worth.