Poetry
Wet pants - Selected poems
by
Neil E Béchervaise
(2012)
There is a potent belief at large in society which most of us, for our own self-preservation, have been unwilling to admit: the belief that traumatic childhood experience is overcome with chronological maturity.
The belief is, in some measure, akin to the pain of childbirth, or maybe a visit to the dentist. It is surrounded by a mythology and a selective language which determines, in conventional circles at least, that even if it was that bad, it is subsumed in the healthy joy of subsequent achievements.
The cries of becoming that I am recalling in this collection present a far more unsettling view of reality. These are voices of anger, of sorrow, of rejection, torment and fear but, ultimately, I hope triumphantly, they are cries of defiance.
This anthology presents cries of defiance against the loss of idealism, the loss of faith, the fear of growing up – or growing old - or maybe growing at all. Perhaps they are the fears engendered by Dylan Thomas as he refused to “… go gentle into that good night.” Perhaps they are the cries of one who, if life is to retain meaning, must “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”