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A Brief For The Defense 

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies 
are not starving someplace, they are starving 
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. 
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants. 
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not 
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not 
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women 
at the fountain are laughing together between 
the suffering they have known and the awfulness 
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody 
in the village is very sick. There is laughter 
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, 
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay. 
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, 
we lessen the importance of their deprivation. 
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, 
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have 
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless 
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only 
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. 
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, 
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. 
We must admit there will be music despite everything. 
We stand at the prow again of a small ship 
anchored late at night in the tiny port 
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront 
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning. 
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat 
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth 
all the years of sorrow that are to come. 

Jack Gilbert (A famous, now deceased, San Francisco Poet)

My interpretation of this poem:

Some lines may jar you in this poem, but I think that the poet means to shock us, and is not merely being insensitive. His line 'But we enjoy our lives because that is what God wants' seemed very insensitive to me on first reading. But his justification of this line 'Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine' does have an irony to it since whether you are starving or rich, this is a gift that the rich cannot hoard for themselves. Don't you think? 

I think the key to understanding this poem correctly though is the title 'A Brief for the Defense.' Who is being defended here if not the poet himself, who in the midst of all the world's suffering (including his own) still suggests that there is enjoyment to be found and that we should not feel guilty if we find it, that God in fact 'wants' us to find it? (He obviously is not a puritan!) I don't think that he is exhorting us to ignore the suffering in the world around us so much as he is to embrace the joy that we do find. It is an interesting distinction that he makes between 'delight' and 'pleasure.' It seems to me that he is saying that 'delight' is more a gift from God and that 'pleasure' perhaps is more a self-centered man's pursuit of the 'delight?' He calls us to accept God's gifts without thinking we deserve them. We should not take responsibility for others or be angry at God when the consequence of bad personal choice or accidental mishap is 'Pain.'

My favorite line in the poem is in fact 'To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.' It seems clear to me that he believes in an afterlife as well when he says humorously 'If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.' His faith is that God's creation always serves some greater good even if we do not understand it (as is mine!) It is OK to feel 'delight' even in the face of our approaching death. 'We must admit there will be music despite everything.'

The fact that he does not directly address what to do about the suffering of others in this poem, I would suggest, is beside the point. I cannot ever really address the pain another feels, but I can address my own. I can choose to honor delight without pursuing pleasure exclusively. The last quarter of the poem is, in fact, an homage to God for the gift of simple things in life that most people ignore. 'We stand at the prow..... years of sorrow that are to come.' Don't you wonder with me what was in the rowboat? What we can best do about the suffering in the world is perhaps not to allow it to overwhelm us personally and to model this to others! There is a difference I think between me caring about other's pain, for example, and thinking that it is my responsibility to make them feel better. As the poet says 'If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation.'

One critical comment on the poem is that for me Jack's focus on the miseries of just India seems culturally insensitive and a little harsh. I was not sure what he meant by the 'cages of Bombay' either. Maybe his line on the Bengal tiger bent him to focus on India's poverty, but except for that, and the mention of Calcutta and Bombay, the deprivation he mentions could be in any country. The poem itself is more prosy and didactic though than poetic I think. My favorite poetic images are 'If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,' and the beautiful ending, 'To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.' This last image though makes the poem for me!

I invite reader's comments on both Jack's poem and my notes on it.
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