Respite in York: Two Views

The ruined tower outside.

The comfort inside.

I'd caught that sore throat on the plane from Frankfurt, and so needed a respite from walking York's stone walls . . . .

Hermes And Company

Brendan Kennelly: "Remember What Marina Said?"

REMEMBER WHAT MARINA SAID?

You'll never do it.

You know you'll never do it.

Admit you know you'll never do it.

The teacher said so.

The doctor and the priest agreed.

They know you were born to fail.

So did everyone at the Cake Sale

And the Book Sale.

Xavier Mulligan TD, not famous for his candour,

Told you to forget it

As did everyone at the Annual General Meeting

Of the Ballyspanner Football Club.

Wise Tynan swears it's totally beyond you.

Wise Tynan knows the story inside out,

He's got the whole thing sussed.

And when you say that you can do it

You fill wise Tynan with disgust.

And now, for the first time,

After long thought, and then some more,

Let me tell you what I've never told you before.

I who supported you

From the day that Clifford beat you

Up against the classroom door

For your stammering and your left-hand writing,

I tell you now, my friend of a lifetime,

You'll never do it.

Remember what Marina said?

Failure is your daily bread.

What's this?

I told you to lie down,

Cover your face with your hands,

Keep your mouth shut.

Be seen, I said, not heard.

What's this?

God in heaven, you're up,

You're opening your heart, your mouth,

Wild flower, you're doing it,

I can't believe it, it's impossible,

You're the most impossible man I've ever known,

You won't lie down,

You live as if you don't believe in right and wrong,

You're out of your mind,

Your mind feels good, being rid of you,

No right, no wrong,

Just you,

The most impossible man in the world,

Song.

--BRENDAN KENNELLY

P.S.  Consider Kennelly's skillful use of end-stops vs. enjambment to make the poem itself act out the move from being bound to being free.

Anemones: Vertical Tide-Pooling

Bob Mould: "Walls In Time"

Here is another set of lyrics from Bob Mould's oh so excellent District Line, though you should really listen to the song . . . .

WALLS IN TIME

Is it a crime to want to show your soul?

Waste enough time, another black hole

Misguided, not even lost, not even sure

Now find the disease or the cure

Has life lost all its glory and wonder

Sad tales are told again and again

Sleep, toss and turn, my old bed

What a tale, again and again

Now all the stories of the world could fit in a building

In a building high and wide

Filed under headings that no one's quite sure of

Lord knows that everyone tried

When the pen meets the paper

When the mind, it begins to stray

How a soul could lose its will to explain

Oh, explain again and again

Day after day, day after day, day after day

Flowers losing life when picked from the ground

A nice arrangement for the occasion

But flowers, when moved from place to place

Lose all meaning, dislocation, dislocation

In a fit of fitless night, a flame attempts to spark a soul

Ignite, burn, candle light, a waste of time, another dead soul

If these walls around my soul could talk

The words would lose importance

Within these walls I hold so dear these words

We all want to leave a mark somewhere

For those of us who feign to care

In all unfortunate times we find a way

To build up these walls in time

To build up these walls in time

Is it a crime?

--Bob Mould

Howe's "The Dream"

THE DREAM

I had a dream in the day:

I laid my father's body down in a narrow boat

and sent him off along the riverbank with its cattails and grasses.

And the boat -- it was made of bark and wood bent when it was wet--

took him to his burial finally.

But a day or two later I realized it was myself I wanted

to lay down, hands crossed, eyes closed . . . .

Oh, the light coming up from down there,

the sweet smell of the water -- and finally, the sense of being carried

by a current I could not name or change.

--Marie Howe

from What the Living Do

My friend Meredith passed this poem to me some years back now as a handwritten card. I imagine that the occasion was my father's death or in the aftermath. I've had Meredith's card on a bulletin board for quite a while, and I realized the other day that I hadn't actually read the poem, hadn't actually read the words, for some time now. You know how things we put up on the walls or on such boards start out as declarations or celebrations, but in time become mere decorations, mere furniture. At least, that's what happens for me.

I like to move my books around in the shelves every so often. I'll shift from alphabetical and genre groupings to as random as possible, or by size and shape, or by color. Occasionally, of course, I'll put books together that I think would enjoy each other's company: Shakespeare's Hamlet next to Sophocles' Oedipus the King, for an obvious pairing, alongside McGuane's Panama, Hemingway's Islands in the Stream, Melville's Moby Dick, and Homer's Odyssey. Mostly, I've found if I move the books around just enough so that I see them as themselves, as individual works, and not as mere and merely familiar color patterns on the shelves, then I am more likely to pull one out and reread it, or to at least re-regard it with all the wonderful actions of the mind and heart (and even body) that follow such an engaged perusal.

So too with pictures and sculptures on the wall. So too with the pictures and poems and quotations and stuff (fishhooks, whistles, talismans) affixed to the two bulletin boards in my study. I need to move these materials around to not overlook them, to avoid merely taking them for granted.

In this case, I just happened to look directly at Meredith's card, at Howe's poem, in a receptive mood so that I saw it. Saw it, read it, considered it. (Hi Dad! Hope the water's fine. Wow, such water could feel pretty good, couldn't it? Just a bit of rest, just . . . .) I reread the poem, felt the poem, considered the gift of that poem.

And now I share that poem with you.

Thanks, Meredith, again.