Mental Fight

In the inspirational style of Astonishing the Gods and his shorter work Birds of Heaven, Ben Okri has created an epic poem, intended as a celebration of our achievements at the end of the 20th century and a rallying cry for the next. Following the theme of his extremely successful inaugural Scotsman lecture at the Edinburgh Book Festival in 1997, the first two sections of the poem appeared in The Times on 2 January 1999, described then as an 'angry, hopeful, weary, wary, epic reveille to the human spirit.' Strongly political, the complete poem touches on issues of racism, intolerance, environmental destruction : We praise our capacity for reason,/But are unreasonably intolerant/Of other people's validity, and reasons. We deploy the finest attributes/Of the mind and spirit/To make ourselves the elect And to cast our fellow travellers/On this earth into outer darkness. What a wonder is humanity:/How marvellous its astonishing gift/For hypocrisy.'