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SONGS FOR HARMONY

Virginia Love Long

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*Appeared in Poetcrit (India), July, 1997. Pages : 61-63

Stephen Gill speaks best for himself, his creeds and beliefs, in his poetry. His voice is a universal tongue, striking immediate response, from Canada to Bombay. Consider the following, by way of introduction:

I Am Still A Man

I am a Christian

but before that

do you know

what I was?

I am a Panjabi

but before that

who was I?

Why do you look

so strangely?

Neither Christian

nor Panjabi

when I entered the world.

I was only a man

don't look sternly.

I am not fanatic

or blood‑thirsty.

I am just a man

like you

or anybody.

Gill's poetry centres upon urgent concern: racism, violence, famine, ecological pollution, wars, greeds, madness, each form of exile, and builds periodic nests in New York-- at the global apex of the United Nations. From page to page, from one poem to its successor, he persists in urgent call not to arms, but to the need to disarm and weave central harmonies.

From a small Canadian city upon the banks of the St. Lawrence River, Gill concentrates his artistic expertise from nation to farflung cultures to distant peoples, drawing them into a common harbour:

Hands linked

like brothers

walking side by side

like twins

in the light

dusk or dark

though blind-folded

yet bound in a design

let us go.

Directing one another

let us march

to embrace that dove

before we die.

Gill's scalding portraits of aggressions and the inevitable results sting deeply to the soul's centre. "If There Be Third World War" combines the far‑sight of last century's Tennyson with the too‑plausible prognostications of contemporary authors recounting the inevitable results of today's war games.

Most importantly, Stephen Gill's poems are a shining testament of religious faiths put into daily practice, disregarding demonitional falderals. There is no reason a poet cannot also be a holy person, and Stephen Gill is most certainly that unique artist. Should any sceptics doubt, instantaneous conversions abound in the sequences titled Trilliums, another brandname for superior haiku forms, seldom performed as facilely as by this Occidental poet/priest :

In the sea of politics

harmony trapped

in the torrents of racism.

War:

to buy the blossom of a mother

for slaughtering of another.

Garbage heavy with empty bottles

and posters of promises---

election is over.

In the deepening fog

trees disappear

birds still sing.

Global peace and social concerns are the primary themes of Gill's work, which is why his poetry has traversed global literary circles and continues to gain appreciative audiences. Author of twenty books, including novels and literary criticism as well as poetry, he continues his chosen path as torch‑bearer for humanity at its artistic best.

He presently holds the post of chief delegate to represent the World University for Canada.

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Virginia Lovesong is a poet and critic from the United States