Featured Poem: The Fly by William Blake

One of the perils – or rather, quite minor but still a significant irritation – of summertime is the endless parade of insects that decide to take a long detour indoors through open windows and doors. It’s fine for them, buzzing about, zipping up, down, around and sideways, exploring the confines of four walls and taking in the sights, but not for you as you flap about with a rolled up newspaper or other quickly assembled aid, spending fruitless and frustrating minutes trying to shoo out the small but super-fast intruder before it lands inevitably on a freshly-made sandwich. Over the past week, our house has played host to a sprinkling of ants, a couple of spiders, three wasps (which has increased my already existing paranoia about those particular creatures, leading me to jump up and be at instant alert at any faint buzzing sound heard in the distance – even when the majority of times the noise turns out to be, somewhat embarrassingly, a lawnmower) and several microscopic but persistent flies. (I am aware that this admission doesn’t make my dwelling seem like the cleanest of places but rest assured, it is meticulously maintained.)

Though they do register fairly high on my personal scale of everyday things that annoy, I’m not so cruel that I set out to squash the life out of said flies, wielding a makeshift fly swatter as a weapon; if one flies into my line of vision or personal space, I’m more likely to wave my hand rather weakly to allow it to drift off somewhere else for a few seconds. Of course, it does depend on the size of the fly – that’s not so easy to do with a super-sized bluebottle. But even then, I’d prefer to open the door and coax it back to the wild outdoors than to end its days with a swift slap. I can’t say that my caring nature extends to wasps, who I insist on being obliterated if they dare to enter (by someone else, obviously – I’m too much of a wimp to risk incurring the wrath of those devilish beings).

Maybe I should be a little more sympathetic to all insects, whether they be harmless or slightly more threatening, inspired by my revisiting of this piece by William Blake. In his Songs of Innocence and Experience Blake examines many aspects of our natural world and considers various parts of the animal kingdom – the imposing strength of the tiger, a creature perhaps sinister and brutal yet mesmerising; contrasted with the tame, gentle and innocent lamb. Through the comparison of these animals, Blake highlights the often contrasting facets of life. As enraptured with nature and everything contained within it, Blake also chooses as a point of inspiration a thing as seemingly insignificant as a fly. Indeed, straight away Blake himself concedes that the fly is by all accounts unimportant, a mere speck used to being thoughtlessly brushed away. But, as with all of the ‘songs’, Blake then ventures to look deeper, pondering the state of the human existence through that of something so much smaller and apparently pointless. His asking ‘Am I not a fly like thee?/Or art not thou a man like me?’ brings into question: just how exactly superior and important are humans? Are our lives really all that significant, when they can just as easily be interrupted with the brush of a ‘blind hand’. It is interesting to consider the similarities – or differences – of the ‘thoughtless hand’ that swats away the fly, with the ‘blind hand’ – perhaps of some ‘higher power’ – that touches a person. Maybe such ‘hands’ are needed to give us reminders not to be so careless, a consequence to our frivolous actions. Perhaps us humans are the biggest irritation of them all – more often than not, we certainly annoy each other more than any insect does – and we could learn something from ‘a happy fly’. Whatever meanings are to be found it does seem rather appropriate that a poem about an apparently inconsequential thing opens up to produce so many possibilities. And rather sobering, as well as partly amusing, to think that we may be part of a hierarchy; the equivalent of an annoying fly to something, or someone else.

The Fly

Little Fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

William Blake (1757-1827)