One of the pleasures of translating is the discovery of a new author, unknown not only to you but, by and large, even to the people in his own country. Such an author is Andreas Thomas. While making no claims to being a “poet”, and in fact maintaining quite the opposite, he has felt compelled, nonetheless, to turn to the verse form as the one best suited to his need to express his deeply religious feelings and convictions, both of which have been sorely tried by the contemporary world where the fate of humankind, and thus existence itself, hangs in the balance. It is curious, but people almost instinctively turn to poetry when engaging subjects of such magnitude and importance, comforted and encouraged by its depth and flexibility, its ability to deal in a multifaceted way with the thorniest of metaphysical matters, its intimate sense of belonging, so they are able to feel stir within themselves ancestral and still vital sources that have nourished the oracle, prophecy, divination and revelation in general since time immemorial.
“Love Seems to Be Something Like That” is religious in the best sense of the word, in the most fundamental sense of the word. Though intensely concerned with Christian morality and the ethical precepts formulated to guide us surely to the benefits of the “good” life, the writer takes a far more comprehensive view than that, showing a keen interest in the nature of goodness itself and why though we have the example of Christ before is (and other great religious founders as well though none of them are as intimately and humanely involved with human fate as Christ) we seem unable to utilize his teachings and indeed are slipping further and further away from them as we make our way tentatively into the Third Millennium. Again and again in this collection, Andreas Thomas returns to this mysterious predicament: why is it that the human being seems to take such a perverse, if guilt-ridden, delight in actively shunning the good? Life would obviously be easier for us all if we “loved our neighbor” -- and though we have clear instructions on just how to accomplish that we refuse to follow them!
Naturally, this failure on our part troubles the writer enormously and causes him to reflect on his own identity, subjecting himself to close and searching scrutiny as he attempts to probe the protean forms and forces that have shaped his approach to faith and doubt, to take not only us but himself to task for not realizing and/or utilizing the potential of each moment to its fullest extent, our stubborn refusal to acknowledge the power and truth of Christ’s message in real-time actions, to embrace the totality of what it encompasses and promises us: no strings attached. The real why, the one we should be asking, the writer implies repeatedly, is not whether God exists but why did He choose to prove to us that His Creation was truly an act of Love. We have to be of some profoundly mysterious purpose to this Christian God to drive Him to sacrifice Himself in the form of His own Son, to experience the very human mystery of Death (and what mystery to be found in all holy scripture could be more unique and puzzling than this act of god, an immortal, making himself experience the terror of ultimate imperfection: death and Death?) This is neither the time nor the place to go any further into what is ultimately the most profound of all theological questions, at least in the Christian world, but the writer through this collection shows by example how through this supreme sacrifice God has reopened, in effect, the road closed since Eden, the road to communication between the sacred and the profane which itself is thus made able to share the sacred in the exchange. As Andreas Thomas says in the title poem of the collection, Love Seems To Be Something Like That: “You reveal the bounty of your heart / offer up a rose / your good word.”
He returns to this theme again and again to show that he thoroughly understands the subtlety of God’s demonstration of His faith in us, allowing Himself through Christ to be subjected to what is considered the most inexplicable mystery of ordinary life, the denial of life and consciousness really from the mortal point of view; the unimaginable, the Great Zero, which He shows is not ultimate but subject to Love as all else, the only power, while itself ultimately unimaginable as well, can overcome death. As the author says in 010101: “At 1: Life, Joy, Light. / At 0: Non-existence. / And the switch? Your love / awaiting my willingness”.
But Andreas Thomas is a modest man, not a doubting “Thomas” in any sense (he uses it as a pen name, but obviously a carefully considered one), but not a zealot either. He does not nourish any illusions that this collection will serve as a spark to ignite a new sense of revelation and lead to a sudden reawakening of awareness, a renewed sense of transcendence (but which, after all, at some point must actually occur). He is terribly concerned with the state of the world as it is as we can see when he speaks of Gaza both ancient and modern in the poem As It Were Great Drops of Blood...: “In the same land, the same country... / In the same place where you commanded: /‘ “Put your sword in its sheath” ’ but that command has been ignored and in so many places such as Kosovo, Middle East and Iraq, and as the author enumerates for us. Because we have failed so monumentally and frequently and recently, he feels compelled to make his own personal “apology” for this dire state of affairs in the poem called Apologia for the Second Millennium: “And now as an apologia for the second millennium / we “foolish virgins” ask ourselves / what might have been to blame / for our hands to come up empty / the dove wounded, / the houses deserted / and love frozen in our hearts...”
Each of these poems represents a different aspect of these vital and multifarious questions. But the author’s aim is summed up marvelously in the collection’s closing poem In Hope Rejoicing: where he shows how all encompassing God’s love is as: our neighbor: “faithful companion / on the road of life... / Your mercy is infinite”, our friend: “who paid the ransom for my freedom / not with surplus wealth / but with the pain of his martyrdom / and blood”, and finally, and above all else, our Father: “who would never have given his son / a snake rather than a fish when he hungered.../ (celebrating) his return / from the prodigality of selfishness.”
This God thus guarantees everything from the microscopic code of the gene, the code of this earthly life, to the macroscopic “gene”, encoded in the stars spread out in their magnificence each night. Code within code forever and ever and Andreas Thomas wonders how it is possible for us to remain blind to this magnificence, this truth that even science has come to confirm. The translator hopes that those who read this humble but passionate plea will feel a surge of hope renewed in their hearts, of vital benefit, no matter how brief it may be.
Philip Ramp
March, 2005
