By Michael Tyler, EJS Poet-in-Residence
Darkness. The absence of light. The deepness of color. The oblivion of emotion. We marvel at it veiling us, in the expanse of the night. We’re rapt by its opacity, in a black velvet dress. We fathom its endlessness, in a pitch-black well.
We also sense its wickedness, in the hearts of those we suspect. We witness its depravity, in the cruelty of disturbing acts. We experience its gloom, in the abyss of depressing emotions.
Throughout history, we have invented words to describe how we see it and how we feel it. With the dual gauge of our senses and emotions, we have measured its proportions in every dimension. The Bortle Scale is used to measure the darkness of the night. But no greater darkness exists, than that which shadows the obscurity of our intentions. Despite the many advances and inventions of humanity, we have yet to devise a scale to grade what lies hidden in our motivations.
The Roman poet Horace once said, “Time will bring to light, whatever is hidden.” This is a great truth and in a world tilted and spun by the forces of fabrication, great truths need to exist. Great truths do exist. One great truth is this compounding paradox: We have abundant evidence for the consequences of ill conduct, and still we have nothing within ourselves to stop us from repeating it.
We appear destined to an ever-worsening cycle of errors; a reality spawned by our deadly contempt for history, our divisive dependence on religion and our soul-consuming addiction to self-interest. Worse still is that we live without recognition of the greatest truth, that one insidious irony which prevails and presides over all others. It is the governing dictate of all societies: truth is nine-tenths perception.
So, it is left to the exceptionally brave amongst us to seek it out and to uncover it for the rest of us to see — that one-tenth aspect of unapologetic clarity that will save us from the guilty inclinations of our perceptions. Throughout all time, the exceptionally brave have always emerged, stepping forward to become the unflinching champions of our eternal verities. They have dared, with great risk, to enter the darkness of the night, cloaked by the insecurities and anxieties of their nations, willing to burrow beneath truth’s protective layers and bring forth the light that will end all shadows; the light that will reveal what must be seen, what must be known, what must be believed.
We have come to such a moment, and we must all ask ourselves if each of us is willing to be exceptionally brave. To see the luminosity of our idealism requires it, for the acuity of our vision has always been focused by our undeterred aspirations. Within us all lies a candle of hope that we must now bring in patriotic unison, to light the torch of our enduring determination, to become what we plead for in our prayers and what we have deeded in our dreams.