To A Baby Without Limbs
This is a poem taken from Kingsley Amis' The Anti-Death League, and its discussed again by Kingsley's son, Martin, in his memoirs Experience.
"To a Baby Without Limbs
This is just to show you whose boss around here
It'll keep you on your toes, so to speak,
Make you put your best foot forward, so to speak,
And give you something to turn your hand to, so to speak.
You can face up to it like a man,
Or snivvle and blubber like a baby.
That's up to you. Nothing to do with Me.
If you take in in the right spirit,
You can have a bloody marvelous life,
With the great rewards courage brings,
And the beauty of accepting your LOT.
And think how much good it'll do your Mum and Dad,
And your Grans and Gramps and the rest of the shower,
To be stopped being complacent.
Make sure they baptise you, though,
In case some murdering bastard
Decides to put you away quick,
Which would send you straight to LIMB-O, ha ha ha.
But just a word in your ear, if you've got one.
Mind you DO take this in the right spirit,
And keep a civil tongue in your head about Me.
Because if you DON'T,
I've got plenty of other stuff up My sleeve,
Such as Luekemia and polio,
(Which incidentally your welcome to any time,
Whatever spirit you take this in.)
I've given you one love-pat, right?
You don't want another.
So watch it, Jack."
In Experience, Martin has the following commentary on the poem:
The deliberate illiteracies ('whose,' 'snivvle,' that little sprain of mispunctuation shortly after 'Luekemia') are explained away in the novel as a smokescreen (part of the author's attempt to disguise his identity). But I think they are also intrinsic to the style of the dramatic monologue, and make this one of Kingsley's best poems. Here we have the voice of omnipotent evil, but also the voice of atrocity, with its brutish facetiousness, its clunking puns. Here we have the 'murdering bastard' who can't even spell, who can't even parse, who can't even *write* . . . Perhaps the most revealing thing my father ever said was in response to Yevgeny Yevtushenko's question (King's College Chapel, Cambridge, 1962), 'You atheist?' He answered: 'Well yes, but it's more that I hate him.' Kingsley could never share Saul Bellow's aspiration, that of establishing 'sober, decent terms with death' (death being 'the dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything'). It wasn't only that he feared death; he hated it, because it was the opposite and the enemy of love.
Covenant College | By Josiah Roe | 12:13 PM
Comments
Challenging words. What's your reaction to them, Josiah?
Posted by: Evan Donovan at March 25, 2006 10:24 AM
My reaction? That's a really long conversation, best held over a few drinks (and smokes) at Hoppy's (much like the one Mesh & Aaron Stewart and I had the other day).
I think though that the question posed in the poem is likely the deepest of one; namely, if there is a God, why isn't He somebody to be resented? I've got my answer, and its a deeply subjective one.
And I'm inclined to believe that the answer, especially if one is attempting to be intellectual honest, can only be answered in a deeply subjective fashion.
People, when going through the ugliest sides of human existence, usually don't respond to evil and pain with abstract theological postulates. They say, "My God/Savior loves me", or, like Job "I know my Redeemer lives".
This, in my mind, is the great failure of the Reformed & Presbyterian ghetto (and to a smaller exstent, Covenant): an animosity towards life and the world that is inherently dishonest and ultimately anti-life, and if maintained to its logical & existential ends, is crippling.
Its the elephant in the room for many Alumni: why do some (or, "so many" as one put it to me the other day) fall away? I suppose we can say its the mission of the college to give academic training, and therefor implicitly, not to provide guidance and direction for resolving ones relation to The Almighty & creation.
If that problem is not, as one professor so often puts it, "deep thinking about important stuff" (being the litmus test of our endeavor), then something is deeply wrong, and your end result is going to be something at odds with the human condition, as opposed to wrestling with it and God.
Anyways, its too late to be thinking about this stuff. I wish I had posted the poem with less context. As per the usual, I had hoped to stirr up a bit more ire, or at least the usual theodical suspects.
Posted by: JosiahQ at March 26, 2006 12:34 AM
That's how I would respond as well. As to what you're saying about Covenant, if you're saying that people need to get more serious about spiritual guidance and discipleship (although certainly not in some mandated-from-above way), I agree. I was just thinking in church the other day, I've had years of theological education, but I've had very little education in how to live a Christian life (how to pray, etc.). I suspect I'm fairly representative in this, and I think it's a sign of misplaced priorities.
Aaron Stewart is back in Chattanooga? I hope we're thinking of the same person.
And if that's an offer, I'd be glad to take you up in a few weeks, Lord willing. I've only ever talked to you in person once or twice.
Posted by: Evan Donovan at March 27, 2006 09:04 PM
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