Peter Tomlinson
Isolation
He joined the mass of people moving forward like
mesmerised captives to an arbitrary fate.
Each alone and without contact, acknowledging only
another’s space: their faces full of sameness.
He stepped beyond himself and saw the pattern that
imprisoned him. Modern life, the great retreat from
reason, drummed irritably on his consciousness.
He felt herded along in a crowd of isolation and
indifference, propelled forward, blinkered by routine
and necessity. They drew him on a course of false
imperatives and hollow achievements; a life of
possessions and cheap satisfaction when life is
but a shaft of light glimpsed through a small hole in
oblivion: a glimpse so fleeting it is unintelligible.
A just god cannot be believed into existence nor can tears
anaesthetise his desperate spirit. The god man has created
is in his own image and therefore corrupt. His pain and fear
cannot be described or shared, only imperfectly imagined.
But imagination is beyond language and hidden by isolation.
No one knows him or hears him when he cries out,
“I exist ... and I am afraid.”
Page(s) 28
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