Truth-and-Darkness Page 37
But, as the poem goes on to elaborate, "this was not permitted." The traveller
must step down by the shadows of a river - the river that can swiftly carry away
any certitude. No sooner is she there than the river vanishes and her self with
it:
Self, my justification,
sole lover, sole companion,
slipped from my side.
..time was not,
and I nowhere.
Yet two things remain -
one was the last surrender,
and the other the last peace.
In the depth of nothing
I met my home.
Vivian Smith summarises some of the many possible meanings of the spiritual
journey of "The Traveller And The Angel":
Here the meaning seems to be that it is only through the acceptance of
inner nothingness and the loss of self, and being absorbed in the process
of the dissolution and the flow and change of the world that spiritual
strength or renewal can be found.38
The river of "Eli, Eli, (C.P. p.44) is like the same dark torrent found in "The
Gateway", only now it becomes a place of torment associated not only with
fear but with what amounts to irrevocable loss. The words, "Eli, Eli" are
those of Jesus, nailed to the cross and close to death: "Eli, Eli, lama sabach-thani":
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken, me?" 39 The poem creates a
state of awareness between consciousness and unconsciousness; a state drifting
close to death and almost like hallucination. The river surges on in an
unstoppable way and it is full of drowning people:
To see them go by drowning in the river -
soldiers and elders drowning in the river
the pitiful women drowning in the river,
the children's faces staring from the river -
that was his cross, and not the cross they gave him.
38 Smith. "Poetry", p.398
39 Matthew 27:46. Jerusalem Bible
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