We’ve always taken pride in family names
in coats of arms
in crests
in shields
but what have we learned from ancestral heritage,
the sages of the past,
the wisdom of the ancients?
So much anger is strangulating the globe
who pays heed to Seneca
for whom anger
is more pernicious to the receptacle
in which it’s stored
than to anything on which it’s poured!
In a world of babbling noise
who recalls Plutarch’s call
to know how to listen
and one will profit
even from those who badly talk!
In these times of intolerance of all sorts
who remembers Aristotle’s judgment
that it’s the mark of an educated man
to entertain a thought
without being condoned!
And amid egoistic hordes
who agrees with Pericles’ viewpoint
that what one leaves behind
is not what’s engraved on monuments of stone
but what’s woven into the lives
of those one knows.
Stoicism is a concept I encountered in academic realms
in Charlotte Brontë’s Helen Burns
in Thomas Hardy’s tragic urns
but the Stoics advocated a resilient way of life
beyond books
a belief in action
beyond mere words.
And Druids were a part of a Yeatsian poetry course
these egalitarian sages had admitted women
into their sacred lore
showed reverence to the natural world
their next of kin, be it a tree
or a bird.
—
Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow) with a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Since 1996, she has been lecturing in Syria. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine and Grey Sparrow Journal. More poems are forthcoming in other magazines. She is a lover of nature and enjoys swimming.
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