Month: October 2003

If I hadn’t liked so many of the poems in “Rumor Verified: Poems 1979-1980” when I first read them nearly twenty years ago, I would be tempted to suspect that these are the kinds of poems that only us old folks would love. Many of the poems seem to reflect the kind of wisdom that comes from looking back on life.

Part I of “Paradox of Time” is one of the first poems in the section, which may be the main reason I chose to include it over several other poems in this section that I love:

PARADOX OF TIME

I. Gravity of Stone and Ecstasy of Wind

Each day now more precious will dawn,
And loved faces turn dearer still,
And when sunlight is withdrawn,
There, over the mountain’s black profile,

The western star reigns
In splendor, benign, arrogant,
And the fact that it disdains
You, and your tenement

Of flesh, should instruct you in
The paradox of Time,
And the doubleness wherein
The fleshly glory may gleam.

Sit on the floor with a child.
Hear laugh that creature so young.
See loom its life-arch, and wild
With rage, speak wild words sprung

From vision, and thus atone
For all folly now left behind.
Learn the gravity of stone.
Learn the ecstasy of wind.

The title alone is nearly enough to make this poem memorable. But when you’ve gone through a near life-ending event, the opening two lines, clich”d though they may be, take on particular significance. I also like the way Warren transforms the distant star into a symbol of “disdain” because it, unlike this “tenement of flesh,” seems infinite.

Instead of causing despair, though, this disdain causes the poet to revel in “fleshly glory,” to celebrate the sheer joy of a young child. If we cannot endure like stone, than we must learn the “ecstasy of wind.”

I probably chose “English Cocker: Old and Blind” for personal reasons, too, since my first dog as a child was an English Cocker and I was as devoted to him as he was to me and our family. Unfortunately, that also means I’ve experienced the “heart-stab” of this poem:

ENGLISH COCKER: OLD AND BLIND

With what painful deliberation he comes down the stair,
At the edge of each step one paw suspended in air,
And distrust, Does he thus stand on a final edge
Of the world? Sometimes he stands thus, and will not budge,

With a choking soft whimper, while monstrous blackness is whirled
Inside his head, and outside too, the world
Whirling in blind vertigo. But if your hand
Merely touches his head, old faith comes flooding back-and

The paw descends. His trust is infinite
In you, who are, in his eternal night,
Only a frail scent subject to the whim
Of wind, or only a hand held close to him

With a dog biscuit, or, in a sudden burst
Of temper, the force that jerks that goddamned, accurst
Little brute off your bed. But remember how you last saw
Him hesitate in his whirling dark, one paw

Suspended above the abyss at the edge of the stair,
And remember that musical whimper, and how, then aware
Of a sudden sweet heart-stab, you knew in him
The kinship of all flesh defined by a halting paradigm
.

Of course, the poem isn’t really about a dog, is it? It’s really about all of us who share “the kinship of all flesh defined by a halting paradigm.” Although we may get angry at those we touch in our lives, there is a bond of trust that transcends all anger.

Still, when we finally stand at that final abyss we will put our final trust in those who have touched us, just as we have touched them.

Though perhaps the reason we bond so with a dog is that they, unlike most people, seem to place “infinite” trust in their master, deserved or not.

“Being Here: Poetry 1977-1980,” dedicated to Warren’s grandfather, focuses on the passage of time and the sense of loss that accompanies that passage, attempting to comes to terms with those losses, perhaps not surprising since Warren was nearly seventy when the first of these poems were written.

In an endnote to these poems, Warren says:

There is one more thing I may mention. The order of the poems is not the order of composition (and certain poems composed during the general period are not included). The order and selection are determined thematically, but with echoes, repetitions, and variations in feeling and tonality. Here, as in life, meaning is, I should say, often more fruitfully found in the question asked than in any answer given. The thematic order-or better, structure-is played against, or with, a shadowy narrative, a shadowy autobiography, if you will. But this is an autobiography which represents a fusion of fiction and fact in varying degrees and perspectives. As with question and answer, fiction may often be more deeply significant than fact. Indeed, it may be said that our lives are our own supreme fiction.

Though I’m not sure this quotation is necessary to understand these poems, it reminded me of statements I’ve read on some fellow bloggers’ pages.

One of my favorite poems from reading the poems when they originally appeared, is:

GRACKLES, GOODBYE

Black of grackles glints purple as, wheeling in sun-glare,
The flock splays away to pepper the blueness of distance.
Soon they are lost in the tracklessness of air.
I watch them go. I stand in my trance.

Another year gone. In trance of realization,
I remember once seeing a first fall leaf, flame-red, release
Bough-grip, and seek, through gold light of the season’s sun,
Black gloss of a mountain pool, and there drift in peace.

Another year gone. And once my mother’s hand
Held mine while I kicked the piled yellow leaves on the lawn
And laughed, not knowing some yellow-leaf season I’d stand
And see the hole filled. How they spread their obscene fake lawn.

Who needs the undertaker’s sick lie
Flung thus in the teeth of Time, and the earth’s spin and tilt?
What kind of fool would promote that kind of lie?
Even sunrise and sunset convict the half-wit of guilt.

Grackles, goodbye! The sky will be vacant and lonely
Till again I hear your horde’s rusty creak high above,
Confirming the year’s turn and the fact that only, only,
In the name of Death do we learn the true name of Love
.

Time may well be measured by loss. Nothing stands still, and even the best moments are but temporary. Every year, no matter how delightful, invariably parts. We celebrate this sense of loss in tributes to “fall,” whether through celebration of fall harvest or through appreciation of fall leaves. Warren masterfully ties this celebration to a memory of holding his mother’s hand while kicking piled yellow leaves. The general acceptance of the passage of time is masterfully juxtaposed to the image of his mother’s grave obscenely covered in fake grass, a loss he is not prepared to accept. This motherless child realizes that only in Death do we learn the “true name of Love.”

The equally dark “August Moon” is memorable for the startling images that open the poem:

AUGUST MOON

Gold like a half-slice of orange
Fished from a stiff Old-Fashioned, the moon
Lolls on the sky that goes deeper blue
By the tick of the watch. Or
Lolls like a real brass button half-buttoned
On the blue flannel sleeve
Of an expensive seagoing blue blazer.

Slowly stars, in a gradual
Eczema of glory, gain definition.

What kind of world is this we walk in?

It makes no sense except
The inner, near-soundless chug-chug of the body’s old business-
Your father’s cancer, or
Mother’s stroke, or
The cat’s fifth pregnancy.

Anyway, while night
Hardens into its infinite being,
We walk down the woods-lane, dreaming
There’s an inward means of
Communication with
That world whose darkling susurration
Might-if only we were lucky-be
Deciphered.

Children do not count years
Except at birthday parties.
We count them unexpectedly,
At random, like
A half-wit pulling both triggers
Of a ten-gauge with no target, then

Wondering what made the noise,
Or what hit the shoulder with the flat
Butt of the axe-head.

But this is off the point, which is
The counting of years, and who
Wants to live anyway
Except to be of use to
Somebody loved?

At least, that’s what they say.

Do you hear the great owl in distance?

Do you remember a childhood prayer-
A hand on your head?

The moon is lost in tree-darkness.
Stars show now only
In the pale path between treetops.
The track of white gravel leads forward in darkness.

I advise you to hold hands as you walk,
And speak not a word.

The phrase “stars, in a gradual/ Eczema of glory” particularly grabbed my imagination since stars are so often used to symbolize an infinite, benevolent universe. Confronted with a father’s final heart attack and a mother’s gradual disintegration into alzheimers, no wonder we’re forced to ask, “What kind of world is this we walk in?”

If the loss of parents wasn’t enough, some event in our own lives forces us “like a half-wit pulling both triggers/ Of a ten-gauge” shotgun, to suddenly realize our own years are rapidly disappearing. Hopefully we can counter this shock with the belief that “who wants to live anyway/ Except to be of use to/ Somebody loved?” If we can “be here” in the immediacy of love, if we hold the hands of the ones we love as we walk through life we can love life while we’re here.