I am that I am, ” said the God of Abraham. Only some such divine tautology would seem to do justice to us all: the old woman who sees ultimate meaning in her grandchild, the mathematician who sees it in a formula, the tribesman who sees it in a crocodile. The meaning of life is that it should mean.
At everyday levels surely meaning is one with nourishment. Clean air, uncontaminated food, and water for the body, ideas that exercise the mind and spirit — without these what on earth is meaningful? In our time meaning is threatened at every turn. Nuclear waste, deforestation, greed, plague. God accordingly may be said (by those who still “believe”) to have exchanged the mask of the creator and judge for that of the firefighter and the paramedic. I put “believe” in quotes because our beautiful human feelings aren’t to be trusted. As a poet, I know how words, even those words brought together under laboratory conditions, breed meanings not intended by the author. The resulting surprise needn’t always be a nasty one. The planet is blackened by us as never before may of its own accord break into leaf tomorrow. But this. is mere literary man’s daydream, and under no circumstances are the world’s lawmakers and corporate heads entitled to share it.
— — James Merrill, Poet, won the Pulitzer Prize for Divine Comedies.
