No Eye at All

BINSLEY POPLARS - Gerard Manley Hopkins
felled 1879

MY aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.
O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew --
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc únselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

I was first introduced to Gerard Manley Hopkins in my Victorian class this semester. Hopkins is an interesting poet who finds that poetry is like the music of speaking and thinking; his unique techniques and sprung rhythm make him a revolutionary figure in poetry. Hopkins was a Roman Catholic Priest with a surprisingly earthly view of divinity. One fascinating thing about Hopkins is the spiritual impetus behind his poetry, and the literary techniques he formed so that his writings would frame his view of God. This view found that every living thing is infused with a unique, flowing self that comes from the divine. "Each mortal thing does one thing and the same" - a sacred act of what Hopkin's calls selving. Each and all "fling out its broad name." God shines through the ordinary. The human sense of inscape is responsiveness to the divinity in creation, an is called instress. The holy breathing of particular selves. Much of Hopkins poems try to capture his human perception of selving beings and to find the sacred power that animates the diverse lifeforms of the earth.

Binsley Poplars is one of those poems that echoes in your mind, winding into your thoughts at the most unexpected moments - tossing a plastic Kind bar wrapper into the trash, ordering a stack of paperbacks. "Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve..." Unselve. When a life form is ended then an opportunity for human insight is "pricked" so that no "eye at all" will be able to see what was. The end of life forms, rural scenes, and local communities is - what is it? People have many answers for the end of particular things. For example, tigers. A villager, who has lived under the constant threat of being lower on the food chain than Shere Khan, will fire away at the threat. Other people vote with their consumer dollars for Endangered Species Tiger chocolate bars. Both wish that tigers could find a place in the wild- away, away. But does anyone wish that the tiger will completely disappear from the earth, its burning bright self lost? “What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?” What human eye will be left to see?

Hopkins thanked God for “dappled things” in another poem, because while the sacred is constant, the earth is wonderfully diverse. I find a strange parallel to the beauty of diversity in the science of energy and matter. Paul Hawkins in The Ecology of Commerce describes the second law of thermo dynamics, which finds that "chaos and entropy" result when energy scatters. Nature is able to defend against chaos through an organization of diverse life forms that exchange energy in their complex relationships, what Hawkins calls negenthropy. He comments, “Only life prevents entropy from extending to nature: the intricate, mysterious interaction of organisms that captures sunlight and evolves into higher levels of order and complexity.” Most human industrial systems are reducing the diversity of life. In another chapter he continues to say, “Given current corporate practices, not one wildlife reserve, wilderness, or indigenous culture will survive the global market economy.” What about the scene in rural Conway Arkansas? UCA is trying to fell a portion of the forest on the Jewel Moore Nature Reserve so that it can advertise special, select housing for fraternity and sorority students. Future UCA students will not “guess the beauty been.” My good friend Patrick likes to bird watch in the nature reserve, and has recently eyed a pair of owls. I hope to see them too.