When you make an important personal decision doesn’t it just make you want to throw up when others seem to think they have every right to question it? Several people have emailed to say they have been ‘persuaded’ to take this course of action or that against their better judgment.
Now, I did not take the decision to be treated with hormone therapy for my prostate cancer lightly, but after discussing it with a specialist doctor who did not pressure me one way or the other. I have to live with that decision, no one else. While confident of taking the right course of action for me, someone else in the same situation might well choose a different path. Even so, it is a fragile confidence, and I am not immune to criticism.
Advising friends in their best interests is one thing, but once
the die is cast, don’t those same friends deserve our 100% support, whatever our personal reservations?
Meanwhile...
Today’s poem first appeared following a request by ‘Rajesh’ and ‘Nikhil’, two Indian students living in the UK. It appears that they had to live apart back home because their families would have disapproved of their relationship, but now they live together in London and are very happy.
Rajesh worries that their relationship must end once they return
home because Nikhil ‘would never openly defy his parents even for love.’ As for
Rajesh, the implication is that he does
have the strength of his convictions. Even so, no one should ever have
to choose between lover and family.
Let’s hope the families of these two young men will see their love
for them overcome any cultural homophobia.
Sad, isn’t it, that (yes, even in the 21st century) two gay men should have to move to another country before they can be together?
TUG-OF-LOVE
Once, ties that bind
lay broken, the last star snuffed out,
harsh words spoken in anger
stubbornly refusing to be put to rout
by an army of emotions
demanding I stay, put things right
where (without meaning to)
I’d said only what was right for me,
all but forgetting you
Once, ties that bind
lay as corpses under the same sheets
where we came together,
planning our future, listening out
for a dawn chorus
we never heard for words
spilled on your pillow,
from lips you had kissed so tenderly,
making you turn from me
Once, ties that bind
ran barefoot into a low, misty dawn
without care or thought
for their salvation, crushing them
among dead grasshoppers
in a frenzy of shamed retreat after
hearing you answer, ‘No way!’
to letting the world in on the secret
that we two are gay
Ah, but ties that bind
once broken can yet be repaired
with the patience and skill
brought to lovers the world over
since time began
by those called in with a will to craft
their reconstruction
with tools of its ancient art passed
generation to generation
For every tie left broken by despair,
in each of us, the capacity for repair
Copyright R. N. Taber 2011; 2013
[From Tracking
the Torchbearer by
R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2012]
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