Silent Modesty

 

There is an arrogant, insolent pride in young people
that is ignorant, blinded by the rules of a corrupt and
stiff morality of materialist and lush living. Saints
become funny, wisdom becomes curious, and the over-
whelming principle is of the eternalization of funda-
mentals that squarely fit all to the convention of petty
obsessions: food, drink, fame, sung to the tune of I.

From here is produced that arrogance, that insolence,
that godless pride in young people that sneer, as it
                            were,
dismissing all comments to correct their maldirection.
And this is not a poem of anger. Though certainly it
hurts to be forced by the subject to a meditation on
                            it.

Now, though there is self-regard in older people,
                            older
brothers for example, that brands such behaviors
                            as
young people may have as "insolent" or "boldly
                            rash,"
yet I’d be different. Though all may have pride I
                            also
have pity. For what's a colossal conceit and rash

audacity in an impudent young tongue but defen-
siveness? Flinging words, subconsciously panick-
ing from a nervous self befilled of secret en-
vies . . . which I blame all on a culture of achieve-
                            ments
sung to arcanums (with this singing airily beating
upon the chest of what wisdom). Look at these earth-
lings. How they design rules of primness, obedience:
protocol and provincialism the young readily submit
to, the washing of their brains with the water of
earthly promises drowning the truth in their Christian
rituals of hypocritical idolatry. What’s the point:

Pretentious dignity is not courage. Ain't it but a
                            buffer
for one's feelings of mediocrity prone to boot out
others as "irrelevant," for such is disdainful self-
righteousness, its self-interestedness but the wine
of sour grapes that cling to all custom for approval!
Is it self-conscious denseness, in other words, the
secret hatreds of which can be merciless and brash,
an immodest posing rising from its throat? And aloof
it must be, full of malice & calumny, hating girls when
girls do not like him, oh this pride must learn to sit
down lowly to all the crushing depressions that have
just begun to come. . . . Only humility can take it all!

Now, there is knowledgeable, silent modesty in age, . . .

 

 

 

Copyright © 1999, 2004 Vicente-Ignacio Soria de Veyra. All rights reserved. Readers are welcome to view, save, file and print out single copies of this webpage for their personal use. No reproduction, display, performance, multiple copy, transmission, or distribution of the work herein, or any excerpt, adaptation, abridgment or translation of same, may be made without written permission from the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this work will be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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