Spiritual And Death In Ezekiel's A Time To Change

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The first poem in Ezekiel’s first volume published in 1952, A Time to Change is a remarkable poem. The poem is built upon the journey and quest motifs. The poem, partly a lament and partly a prayer, continually hovers around the basic concerns of the poet: moral conduct, spiritual redemption, the desires of the body and the claims of the soul. It begins with a question and ends with a sense of certainty, assurance, and hope. The poem in this sense symbolizes the poet’s spiritual journey from doubt and despair to assurance and hope. The constant conflict between the spiritual and the mundane, between the sense of the sin and the desire for the redemption, between the demands of the body and the desires of the soul leaves the poet in a state of despondency. Redemption can be won by total and unquestioning submission but, as the poem says, “when the mind determines everything / The leap is never made, the music / Never fully completed”. The soul has to tune with the eternal cosmic music and the heart must dance at the rhythm of the cosmos. But this is not possible because the mind with its tendency to doubt and question causes alienation resulting in “The amputated gestures, eyes turned away, / Incomplete absorption in the common scene, / Cramped, sedentary, in silent rooms, / Marking time on unknown ground / With faults concealed.” The…show more content…
It is this love for the common humanity that serves as a saving grace for Ezekiel even when he writes with humour and irony in his poems of character
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