The singing voice is the sensual self and the talking voice is the spiritual self. The poem harps on the characteristic concern of the poet about the social conduct of a moral individual. Metaphorically the poem is a quest for ‘a style of verse and life’ to ultimately ‘win redemption / in the private country of my mind’. The desire is to arrive at a golden mean, to ‘cut excesses’, and to ‘acquire the equilibrium of art’ in the passion of mind and heart as he says in another poem On an African Mask. In yet another poem, In Emptiness, Ezekiel says, ‘let me always feel/ The presence of the golden mean/ Between the Élan of desire/ And the rational faculties’. In the same poem he says ‘Let reason and emotion fare/ As man and wife; let them quarrel, / Make love or live occasionally/ Apart, and then be reconciled/ But let them not, indifferently, /Empty the house of words and music, / Partners of a marriage in …show more content…
Gieve Patel in his Introduction to the Collected Poems is rather reluctant to consider Ezekiel a religious poet for the only reason that, as he says, Ezekiel ‘holds discomfiting truck with matters concerning this world’. For Ezekiel, however, spiritual inclination does not necessarily mean denial of healthy sexuality. In fact, Ezekiel’s attitude to sensual pleasure is balanced and healthy. He does not indulge in the glorification of senses as romantic poets do nor does he condemn it as many of the religious poets do. In yet another poem Ezekiel