Professor Dr. Frank Tierney

 

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REFLECTION OF AN INDIAN POET   

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*Appeared in The Canadian India Times, November 15, 1973.

 

In 1842 Alfred Lord Tennyson published his long interior monologue, locksley Hall. Among the themes expressed in the narrator's reaction to the first half of the nineteenth century is a prophecy of the formation of the United Nations: a prophecy of world federalism:

 

Till the war drum throbbed no

longer and the battle flags were

furled in the Parliament of man,

the Federation of the world.

 

Throughout the poem the speaker expresses public hope and private despair.  In his first volume of poetry Stephen Gill expresses this same timely and significant theme of world unity. But there is variety of theme and tone in these twenty- four poems. He writes of childhood, youth, maturity and love. Most poems, however, contain at their core the need for love between persons and nations.  There are anti-war poems like "War is Fraud” :

 

Made a hero

for the orders

and the kills

on the fields.

 

In the prison

often thought

about the war

and its fraud.

 

This poems is typical of Mr. Gill's subject matter and forms. This capsuled expression of heroism is juxtaposed against a fickle society which at some moment elevates to heroism and at another relegates to prison. Ironically, neither condition is the fault of the character in the poem. Although the ostensible subject is war the poem's deeper meaning is the corrosion of sensibilities and resulting injustice and intolerance. The sparse form and bare imagery reinforces the emptiness of human relations. But this style is representative of most of Mr. Gill's poems. And appropriately so. Because most deal with those fleeting moments of human contact in which selfishness and irresponsibility are manifest.  There  are other views of life in this volume; and Mr. Gill captures the one meaningful view-- love. This view is the vantage point of solutions to personal and world disharmony. One short example is the poem to "Mother" :

 

Message of delight

Image of sacrifice

You are highly prized

This life and pleasure

I owe to you.

 

Although the book's prevailing tone is cynical of mankind's contemporary attitude, there is hope for those persons and nations who transcend selfishness, aggressiveness and opportunism. There is, in Mr. Gill's mature work, a public despair but private hope. Survival and growth of the person and the nation begins with inner enlightenment, inner  awareness  of  the  principle  of survival-- love.

 

But  there is in Tennyson's poem and Mr. Gill's volume a hierarchy of values. The first and most important is, as John Henry Newman insisted, "growth with in."  This growth requires spiritual priority. This principle leads man to personal, national and international harmony through an understanding that comes from love.

 

Mr. Gill's  book  reflects  his personal experience. He  is a member of the Board of Directors  of  the  World Federalists of Canada and is editor of the Canadian edition of international publication World Federalist.