Of course we always wanted to have wings, we always wanted to be able to breathe under water and we wished we could speak to animals. In some people these are passing fancies in others they become life-long passions, never attained but dreamed of so that we get ‘nearly there’ with hang gliding, aqualungs and crazy gadgets that make animal nosies.
But the brain is a clever piece of evolved technology and it carries with it exquisite instances of the strange and rewarding. High on that list is hearing in your mind the prefect reproduction of a dead friend’s voice. As the Greek poet put it ‘…those nightingales awake,” but there is also the thought of projecting oneself into the future beyond one’s years. I share with you one of the most beautiful such thoughts by James Elroy Flecker:
To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence
I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words as messengers,
The way I shall not pass along.
I who am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.
I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.
But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?
How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Moeonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.
O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.
Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.