Limping People

    I notice them now,
    Though I never used to,
    Limping along with
    A gait like mine:
    The trembling knee,
    The steadying cane,
    The many I’ve been ignoring.

    I dreamt last night
    Of meeting someone,
    We were younger then
    With nothing minding:
    Coffee and conversation.
    I went on ahead.  We’d
    Meet by the way

    Some place, my dream
    Non-specific.  I saw
    It last night like an older film
    Her gentle looks confounding. 
    I’ll hold the tiller till the
    Dream dies away my
    Thoughts stay full of longing.

Morning Rain

 

    Rain, falling round about
    Is gently covering
    Everything I see.  Keeping
    Now is hard, rushing
    Off as thoughts strive
    To do.  There has been
    Much rushing, striving.

    I stood like this in the
    Yellow Sea, stretching
    From here through the
    Barbed wire fence
    On out to the horizon.
    Later with my
    Seabag near I
   
    Watched the bus coming
    To take me to Pendleton . . .
    And in a rain like this
    In a grotto near
    Newport Beach with her
    Eyes sparkling a sweetness
    I was sure would last forever.

Before the Wind

    Sailing before the wind
    This long while I
    Wasn’t prepared to
    See it change, put
    Me on a broad reach,
    Scrambling below for
    My spinnaker half-

    Heartedly, settling for
    The Genoa and as the
    Wind grew, the working
    Jib and then the storm.
    Fitting this if it's more
    Wind than I can handle,
    Limping from stem to stern

    Well enough when the weather
    Was fair, but this strange wind
    Shoves me whither it will.
    Now down to my smallest
    Sail, gripping the tiller with
    Knuckles white I feel
    The overwhelming come.

Wounded Bait

    I’m here as well as I can be,
    Braced at foot and knee,
    Thrust-spear honed sharp
    Pointed toward the herd –
    No time to think of what
    Comes next, whether to be
    Or not in a pleasant place.

    After the wolves my leg
    Won’t work as of old –
    Can’t run to hunt –
    Can’t pivot to fight
    Enemies who come.
    I can stand here and wound
    The beast that runs me down.

    Good food it will be for those
    At camp and good to see
    By those who dash out at
    The right time.  The sun sees
    Me too, breathing all this 
    In as I should, and fine:
    Hunting here one last time.

July 4th 2019

    Dreaded independence: Susan
    Died this day four years ago --
    Now bombs declare their dominion
    Once again.  Duffy again throbs.
    Ben leans hard against my leg.
    Jessica anxiously watches me
    Creating competing sounds.

    Duffy paws my leg
    Wanting me to make it
    Stop – this explosive
    Ritual we endure again
    ‘Til the powders gone. 
    There is nothing for it but
    That and gathering here

    Waiting while the sounds die
    Down and Duffy’s trembling
    Stops.  Ben moves away
    And Jessica closes her
    Eyes, tired of the fear
    She felt.  I lean back
    In my chair at the end

    And with my own eyes closed
    See Susan lying downstairs
    On the hospice bed sighing
    The last of her life away in the
    Silence following the sound
    Of the bombs that died
    Away with her last breath.
   

The progress of poetry

    Is it linear progress:
    Kingdoms, democracies, a
    Global identity, reactionary
    Brexits not withstanding?
    Similarly is there progress
    From Elizabethans to
    Augustans on down to

    Our Rock-Star lyrics?
    I wondered if my task
    Was to move poetry in
    Another direction.
    Chomsky told us we
    Must enter anarchy
    And I saw that we had.

    Fatigued, appalled
    I might be. It thundered,
    Impervious to change.                       
    It seemed enough here
    Watching her fade year
    By year to find the means 
    To write a new Inferno.

   

J. Alfred Prufrock explications

J. Alfred Prufrock explications
    A common explication, an explication I would call banal, sees The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock as a character depiction of a man who lacks self-confidence, who dithers, and can’t make up his mind.  As the poem proceeds Prufrock sinks lower and lower until he like a crab with ragged claws is at the bottom where he hears mermaids singing, but not singing to him.  The voices he complained about earlier in the poem then wake him, get him caught up in their concerns, and he drowns.

I see the poem differently. T. S. Eliot knew (he wrote the poem at, I think, age 27) that he had it in him to be Prufrock, and that is what he became, but not totally. He knew what it was to be inspired during his writing of his poetry – the mermaids singing. And his early successes made him an instant success with the English literati. So should he have set his social and literary successes aside and seek the mermaids?  Or should he ignore them and settle for the fame he had already achieved, something he valued greatly and wished to enhance. He compromised by devoting himself to criticism, teaching and publishing. None of which activities required his listening for mermaids.

Even though he has “heard the mermaids singing, each to each.” He does “not think that they will sing” for him. And yet he has “lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown” until “human voices” woke him [with banal responsibilities] and he drowned.

What do critics do with a poet who produced relatively few poems but is still (or they want him to be still a) major poet? Another such poet was Dylan Thomas. In his introduction to A Reader’s guide to Dylan Thomas, William York Tindall (in 1962) wrote,

“Thomas wrote sixteen great poems – give or take a couple. Few poets have written so many. If I were making an anthology of the hundred best lyrics in English, I should include two or three by Thomas along with half a dozen or more by Yeats. To those who want to know which sixteen of Thomas’ poems I have in mind I offer a list of seventeen: “I see the boys of summer,” “The force that through the green fuse,” “Especially when the October wind,” “Today, this insect,” “Hold hard, these ancient minutes,” Altarwise by owl-light,” “We lying by seasand,” “After the funeral,” “A Refusal to Mourn,” “Poem in October,” “Ceremony After a Fire Raid,” “Ballad of the Long-legged Bait,” “Fern Hill,” “In Country Sleep,” “Over Sir John’s hill,” “Lament,” “In the White Giant’s Thigh.”

Tindall goes on to justify his choice: “Value judgments of this sort, notoriously subjective, and uncertain, are not unlike the reports of a winetaster, which depend upon experience in tasting.  Saying that Thomas wrote sixteen great poems means that, having read his poems again and again and having read many others through the years, I find these sixteen agreeable. . . .”

Agreeable though they may be, my impression is that Thomas’s reputation as a poet is not faring well. He was a “rock star” in his age. That is, he had a beautiful reading voice. He did outrageous things.  He spoke his mind regardless of the cost, and was a drunkard and womanizer.   He was an interesting personality to a great number of people . But do many read his poetry today? Maybe in Wales, but they aren’t totally reconciled to his having written in English.

In T. S. Eliot’s case many still do read his poetry. I just reread The Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock” and found it . . . agreeable.