"Eventually you’re left with contemptible words –
*prayer even *heaven and
your task is to extract them
from their matrix, the slum of grammar, the sewer
of cause-and-effect. So that prayer
is not *to anyone, and heaven
was built by no one for no reason,
and anyone could move in, you could move in …
*Soul likewise a trinket, the blue charm
Turks call a *nazar."
this is a strong piece, Fred. I do find it rough in parts but it has real
content, sometimes tough sometimes chewy.
best
dave
2009/6/10 Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]>
> I Can Explain
>
>
> 1
>
> I had no concept of fiction.
> The girl with lathe-turned curls and a mauve,
> trapezoidal dress stole
> my heart, her one expression arch but kind.
> The similarly pastel
> boys – neckless rectangles – seemed
> not of the sort who would ever mock
> and hurt. And they all
> appeared of the same size
> and moral-intellectual level
> as the lizard- and squirrel-people. And
> dogs, who remained quadrupedal
> but also participated in
> the exchange that was going on,
> the solemn ritual or lesson.
> And flowers, and the supervising stars.
> I asked Mother where
> the book was set, and could we go there.
> I cried to find a door into the book.
> No. I only stared
> as she read the story – wondering,
> too young to cry for ideas or talk.
>
> I had no concept of fiction
> or reality. The girl
> had clear opinions and the nerve
> to express them readily,
> including the essential point, that she
> was scared. But her changeless eyebrows
> couldn’t reflect this fact
> and I strove to communicate it
> to the boys. They would be my gang,
> we would be her loyal knights –
> though my outline wavered; I was not, like them,
> a simple geometric figure.
> Despite her fear she couldn’t cry,
> for tears would be a single drop,
> larger than anything. We waited,
> uncertain how to serve.
> I lingered on that page for years.
>
>
>
> 2
>
> Rather too late you recognize
> that only pain and humiliation
> exist, or emerge from what exists.
> And recognizing that this recognition
> comes late is pain; it might have been,
> encountered earlier, a talisman
> against humiliation and pain.
> Now there will be only pain, some
> humiliating (like crapping yourself),
> and the fear of pain, itself pain;
> at best a diminished awareness of being
> humiliated (perceiving which
> is humiliating), then morphine.
> Desperate for a third constant,
> you seize on the intermittent
> satisfactions of work, each of which
> is victory as long as you
> don’t ask what they amount to.
> Improvised eternities
> of this sort (the only sort)
> are a poor substitute for time;
> recognizing which
> is one of those rare sorts of pain
> that can become satisfaction.
> After the rain, the day is beautiful.
> A mysterious rash spreads up your arm.
> The itch, interrupting thought,
> being not exactly pain won’t be respected
> and is thus highly humiliating;
> and one is as much nature as the other.
>
> 3
>
> The Bunco Squad, in their sedans
> as black and fast as history,
> are set to go. They will sweep
> Fraud from the city. They know
> the identities of Mr. Big,
> the Hand, the Tong, the Kingpin;
> perhaps, when the stars dim
> tomorrow morning, they’ll have found
> the bigger Boss behind these.
> Mr. and Mrs. Citizen,
> meanwhile, already feel a flow
> of vital energy in new directions,
> towards new corruptions. In a tenement
> near the docks, a phone rings
> in the squalid quarters of a clairvoyante.
> Even she is connected
> to the Organization; its gruff tones
> tell her to pack her Tarot cards
> and amscray. But the mark
> who has just entered is so tempting –
> broad-shouldered, big but somehow seedy,
> tongue-tied, obviously needy –
> that she smiles, and starts her spiel and lights
> an incense stick. His eyes
> upon the crystal ball are greedy
> and then he’s in it. So, to some extent,
> is she. A battered freighter
> beside a rotting quay occludes
> the vague horizon. Which,
> promising storm, provides
> a measure of his loneliness.
> Troglodytes poke the stony beach,
> avoiding every eye; the town,
> ill-lit in the dawn wind, will
> withhold even the few delights it offers.
> The noise of gulls along the shore
> obscures the approaching sirens of the cops
> and softens the harsh wheedling of the psychic
> as she says, *I see you are a sailor*.
>
> 4
>
> Eventually you’re left with contemptible words –
> *prayer even *heaven and
> your task is to extract them
> from their matrix, the slum of grammar, the sewer
> of cause-and-effect. So that prayer
> is not *to anyone, and heaven
> was built by no one for no reason,
> and anyone could move in, you could move in …
> *Soul likewise a trinket, the blue charm
> Turks call a *nazar. The main thing
> is to appropriate these sentimental
> concepts in a way that liberal
> theologians cannot think still
> longs for their great principle,
> or Principal you may then reveal
> as what he is: red eyes and teeth
> within a groundless jungle …
> Sun on the coffee cup.
> Night thoughts at noon, a search
> for a shadier spot. Slow step
> and thought, the pointlessness
> of ideas in verse or age.
> Similarly you may call yourself
> heroic in covertly standing up
> for unfaiths whose time has passed
> or never was, and against people’s
> rage on behalf of their unified God,
> the unified selves they are.
>
> 5
>
> Couldn’t we win some sort of cosmic
> lottery, or an inheritance from some
> transdimensional uncle, changing life?
> Surely the laws of physics wouldn’t
> mind being broken in a minor corner
> like ours. We’d promise not to tell. –
> Not even a cruise to another world;
> merely a kind of bubble around minds,
> infusing the shared medium of danger,
> diluting its acidity, so to speak.
> The serial killer would carry on
> as before, but his playthings
> would be mindless, well-programmed androids.
> The abuser could express himself
> more than ever, looking over,
> if he chose, to see his wife or kid
> kicking brains from the head
> of something like him. And, if you swung that way,
> you could look down on ten billion butts
> at the call to prayer. There would be time
> at last for the boredom that arises
> from the littleness of individual worlds,
> instead of the usual, imposed by
> the outside. And perhaps
> for that “closure” in which potential victims
> believe, but which never happens ….
> In the park, a girl – was she blind? transported?
> Why? – touched the face of another,
> also no more than twelve,
> with inscrutable tenderness; that gesture
> would have time, if needed, to continue.
> And the poet could imitate the Buddha,
> holding forth a flower in silence,
> unworried by cliché.
>
--
David Bircumshaw
"Nothing can be done in the face
of ordinary unhappiness" - PP
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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