Throughout the Middle Ages men despised life and thought of death in the language of terrors. They passed through life as the valley of the shadow of death. The body was looked on as unclean and the mind as the emanation of the Evil One. In the stages of history, after the Mystery of the Gate1, a gentler vision has become available for humankind. Although still possessed of some fire and fear, as it is, it is a vision in which the body is seen as the temple of the soul and the mind, a luminous light in the world of existence.-Ron Price. Reference 1 is to the Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, Haifa, 1976, p.57. The world is a school, every atom in existence, the essence of all created things; and one day, when I pass on, days of joy will I enjoy, far removed from these mirages, these vapours which I chase in this dry land only to discover, in the end, that they were mere illusions. Soon I will go into a hole and be heard no more. God will deal justly with me to the nth degree, to the extent of that speck on a date stone1 and I will dance as I have never danced and gain, at last, that sure stance.2 1 The Bab, Selections, p.68. 2 ibid., p.66. Ron Price 28 April 1999 (written in the month I retired from full-time work after 50 years in classrooms: 18 as a student and 32 as a teacher)
Emily Dickinson wrote a poem about what it was like in one’s house the morning after one of its ‘loved ones’ died. She refers to ‘putting Love away’ and not using it again ‘Until Eternity’. It seems to me that one has this experience many times in life, especially when one moves to another town and never sees the person again; it is as if they died.-Ron Price with thanks to Emily Dickinson, Number 1078, Emily Dickinson: The Complete Poems, editor, Thomas Johnson, Faber and Faber, 1970, p.489. There is a love we use on earth and then we put away. ‘Tis as if it’s in a box until eternity. It’s not as if this love has died, just taken off the stage. How real it is, its golden coin will one day reveal true gage. I knew her once,1 the kindest heart. I let it slip away. Perhaps it was the best, but one never knows. For if we’d wed my role on stage would have been a story on such a different page. Ron Price 4 January 1999 (written in my last year in Western Australia, before taking a sea-change and retiring to Tasmania) 1 I was thinking of a woman, at the time I wrote this poem, whom I knew in Whyalla, a Greek lady named Kathy Karavas, from July of 1971 to December 1972, during my first marriage. I talked to her many times in my home and hers, usually with others present. So I got to see her many sides. I liked them all. I also found her a very attractive woman physically. We lived through a great deal in the Baha’i community over those eighteen months. I had a short visit with her in December of 1973, I think it was in Whyalla. I was going through a divorce at the time and, for some reason, did not seriously entertain the idea of marrying her. I will never know why the idea did not enter my mind at the time.
