Ich Du Ich Es

For some reason a couple of months ago I started thinking about the books on popular psychology I read when I was in my late teens, particularly the works of R. D. Lang. After reading some extracts from 'The Divided Self' I ended up, inevitably, on the Wikepedia article about Lang, which in turn pointed me towards the work of Martin Buber, who I had not come across before. In particular I was quite intruiged by his interest in the relationship of dialogue and existence - and the ideas he formulated about 'Ich Du and Ich Es. I have been reflecting on inner and outer dialogues lately, and wondering if poetry has a unique power to articulate a limnal zone between the two. Somewhere amongst all of this I found myself thinking about my dear friend and colleague, Val Smith, and the lunch time musings we used to have about life's great imponderables. A sestina - that's what is required, I thought to myself...

Ich-Du, Ich-Es

Imo Val Smith, 1955 - 2013

An old friend once said, “If you possessed
more self-belief imagine who you could be?”
A moment’s silence, I wondered who
‘you’ might be – ‘tout le monde’ or myself?
I proffered no reply. I imagine
what she meant was that I lacked self-belief.

Was this so? Indomitable belief
in what seemed right, quiet self-possession
made her the strong one, me weak. “Imagine
we’re multi-selves choosing who we can be.”
She shook her head, “Questions of the self
perhaps pose how or why but never who.”

I cannot speak with her again, and who
she is, now couched within other’s belief -
an intermittent, vicarious self,
the bereaved’s dumb vassal possessed
by grief. ‘That’ question, ‘To be or not be’
stumps thought; it concerns what we imagine.

So are we merely what we imagine?
Conjured selves? If so, a question- who
performs the trick? Suspecting maybe
sleight of hand I suspend disbelief
and gasp in wonder as I'm dispossessed:
Ich-Du, Ich-Es, - our sere dismembered self.

What of the self half-hidden from itself -
the Id’s dark forest of unimagined
desires secretly proscribed? Prepossessed
by dreams fixed circuitry hard wires who
we are: ‘Know thyself’ – a myth! Self-belief -
a presumption of who we’d like to be.

The afterlife is what our friends imagine
us to be, but now, as for myself, who
I am is hidden, forever dispossessed.