DARel-PhiForumClub

It’s easy to offer answers and sound confident, but all of us have to navigate this pandemic with our own thoughts and feelings. In my younger years I loved and looked to poetry more than I do now, but two poems have stood out to me for years. The first is by John Donne, this part from his famous “No Man is an Island,” where he writes, “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;” The other is far lesser known, but one of my favorites by Matthew Arnold titled “To Marguerite: Continued,” “Yes! in the sea of life enisled, with echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, we mortal millions live alone. The islands feel the enclasping flow, and then their endless bounds they know.” While at first Donne’s poem seems hopeful and Arnold’s dreary, both have a melancholy tone. Behind it, however, are two men who struggle with our common experience: there is pain in being together and there is pain in being

Who’s the shadow underneath the mask Who’s the sad clown With a knife behind her back Who’s the secret whisperer And the maker of all dreams Who’s the fragile thread That connects present with the past Who’s the conqueror of pain Who is the child hurt and who licks the scars Who’s the voice that never stops As long as time ticks Who’s the watcher behind the tinted glass The true self never dies Covered by dirt and shame it hides It struggles its way through the tides The shadow and the mask The nameless one behind both lies