The night before us

The time that is currently unfolding before us is marked by the alternation of modernity, passsing from the pandemic to the war, dressing everything in the clothing of pain and suffering. In this situation, by no means recomforting, Poetry can become a cure as well as a path to healing. We can consider the creative art described by the high quality poetry, as being the doctor that applies bandage on our souls, tends to our spirit’s wounds and calms the suffering of these moments of pandemic and war. In the same curative line we can find the present volume of poet Neil McGregor, suggestively entitled  The Night Before Us, a work that opens for us the perspective of healing through Poetry.

 The  passing of the time theme and the importance of the present moment theme, that forever define the human being, are two defining axis for the author. They blossom into numerous evolutions of the Antique thinking, but also of the Modern one in regard to the Great passing. The two favorite themes mentioned above separate the numinous from the celestial space, from the transcending of matter towards spirituality. 

 Neil McGregor rebuilds a time and a space which are familiar with what is past the reset of humanity’s ill memory. His attempt to provide a meaning to the new concept of Paradise, reborn from the ashes of the old world, just as a Phoenix bird is contoured with lines of such finesse, and with such a distinguished poetic harmony. We can see this construction as a poetry volume cathedral. Moreover still, we find a determining demiurgical dialogue between the poetic self and the Creator. Everything is dressed in the clothes of becoming, of knowledge for accentuating the Good, The Truth and the Beautiful. 

 The Poet Neil McGregor presents a new perspective over the world that will come, that will carry the stigma of all those that have remained in these times of no answer, but that will also heal itself through Poetry, Love and Daydreaming.

 The entire world became an old city:

„Remember that old town

We used to dream of each and every night

while walking on emptied streets,

with flowers shining in our eyes?

Narrow alleys, old houses with big eyes

And smoking feelings on the rooftops,

decent people walking amongst us

like memories through our dreams?”

(Old town).

 And life became light and hope:

„Light

Lighter

Lightning

Lit

Lighthouse

Lite

Lie

End.

...

Flight”

(Life).

 The aquatic environment rewrites a world which bears the imprint of a new breath. This is given by the love that borns life and rebuilds the human souls within an wavy immense ocean and this infinite universe.

 Neil McGregor’s volume of lyrics The Night Before Us envisions a descriptive image of the new era that will come, as a prophetic perspective, determined by that tomorrow which will change everything and which will bleed ideas, words, poems all in a note of bright horizon.

Pădureni-Timiș,  dr. Victor Constantin Măruțoiu

20 Aprilie 2022