Requiem

“Requiem” is something of a war poem in that it is a verse bravely launched against two opposing forces that in the closing decades of the 19th century fiercely contested for the heart and soul of the British people, indeed of Western civilization itself: religion and science. “Requiem” challenges both, mocks both, endorses neither, and ultimately offers a vital alternative, a way out of the hokey dead-end, no-win High Noon dramatics of these two diametrically opposing worldviews.

Ironically, everything about “Requiem” would anger the Judeo-Christian community that provides the poem’s title and that had, for millennia, executed the Requiem service as a way to affirm a grand, cosmic purpose to existence. The Requiem service was designed as a sober celebration of passage, the body at last relinquishing its tight hold on the soul that was free now to seek its greatest reward, its greatest translation. Live fully and purposefully, the argument went, as a way to enjoy the consolation and reward of the afterlife. Every effort, every move, every decision in a person’s life, no matter how small, had consequence, cosmic consequences, because of the God who demands in the end transparency and insists on accountability accountability that has caused some to view the Judeo-Christian God as an omnipotent Accountant-God, the all-seeing Divine Bookkeeper.