My third-Sunday poem this month tackles the two seemingly at-odds concepts of its title. Must they be in conflict? Can a synthesis of the two be found? (I’m not going to get into the whole “post-modernism” thing in all this.) In a way, this poem is another of those poems about my poetry and my poetic mission, although less explicitly so than the other entries in that particular personal genre (e.g. A Skaldic Eagle Takes Flight, A Skaldic Eagle in the World, A Skaldic Manifesto.) Enjoy!

Next month, I will start something different. A poem that will span four monthly installments. Yes, a poem. The only two super-long poems I’ve written so far are both in my Eagle’s Mead, but it’s not one of them. I have something else in mind, which is, in a way, a bit overdue, and might have been done long ago, except that it’s going to be rather long. Not as long as those two, however. You’ll see what it is next month. The only hint I’ll give is that is something that would have fit in my Viking Poetry for Heathen Rites, and will go into whatever book I have as a sequel to VPfHR.

The current poem was posted back to my Patreon Blog in April 2023—subscribe there to get these poems months before they appear here, plus much more content that will never appear here. And my Patreon subscribers, of course, already know what that four-installment poem is.

Tradition and Modernity

A World of Tradition, A World of Modernity:
the one was lost in the waxing of the other.
But dire is the doom that Modernity has wrought:
our Western World is at war with itself.
Conflict is everywhere, a fight that’s existential,
and ruled by capital, we’re really in a fix.
Whence did it come? What can we do?
Great gains we’ve made, growing in power,
with methods and machines to manifest will
in a Faustian bid for a future unlimited.
But we lost our souls—those lights within—
and technology’s gains have had a noxious price:
they are terrible masters that’ve taken as slaves
the societies they should serve, setting the people
as servants instead. And the servants fight,
squabbling bitterly with squalor abounding,
with the people treating the people as things,
as if they were the machines—this must be stopped.
Our hearts cry out for a higher life.
Recovering our souls is the call we’ve to answer,
to bring new meaning back to our lives.
Since no powerful zealotry can dissolve the people
and elect a new one (though the louts have tried),
we must live in this world and bring light to it,
peacefully together or peacefully separate.
Tradition is the way, which deemed an order
of family, community, and fulfilling tribes,
with religious life as a link to the Sacred,
so that all had meaning to orient their lives
and see a world—a serious one—
that’s filled with subjects (not simple objects)
to accept and honor for the souls they have.
That would bring healing—a balm much needed—
first and foremost to our fellows and ourselves
and then to living biomes in land, air, and water.
But can we get there and keep the gains
—for working our will—of the world today?
A World of Tradition, A World of Modernity:
is synthesis possible? Synthesize we must,
to bridge the impasse, break the stasis,
and stand anew in a stable Center,
where we are ordered inside and ordered outside.
Where will it start? In one place truly.
Synthesis begins inside our hearts,
for each in their own, and only then
can the Work go out to a World that needs it.

Copyright © 2024 Eirik Westcoat