It sounds, Lawrence, well (I see your 2 sees & agree but), but it shows: & so I too saw a kind of film, in which it struck me that both woman & world were under attack, & given the discussion in Canada these days on violence against women, heard it that way... the focus close, then way far out, then close again...
Doug
On Nov 12, 2014, at 6:05 AM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Thanks, Patrick, sort of! I mean... I think it has a dimension of which I
> was not aware as I sent the poem.
> I never thought I'd be quoting Bob Geldoff, but I heard him say the other
> day that Ebola is all the worse because people dare not touch each other.
> That brings my flirtation with animated film down to earth.
> And yet what I had in mind IS as bad as subject
> I shall now withdraw inside my poem singing Can't hear you la la la
>
> L
>
> On 12 November 2014 12:39, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> L Yes those Ebola images -all mixed up -nightmare -cheers P anyway
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>> Behalf Of Tim Allen
>> Sent: 12 November 2014 11:38
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: distress
>>
>> Oh Lawrence that is good. I immediately thought of that awful footage from
>> last night's Channel 4 news on ebola. Did you?
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Tim
>>
>> On 12 Nov 2014, at 11:23, Lawrence Upton wrote:
>>
>>> A little woman lies hunched upon a floor.
>>>
>>> Her bones ache, she says. I'm rotting, she says.
>>>
>>> She rocks. She rots, inside. Her body's damp
>>>
>>> as yester year's fallen bough; it's hollow
>>>
>>> and weak, but not with the softness of youth
>>>
>>> and health. Her rocking accelerates
>>>
>>> till the image is blurred; and the figure
>>>
>>> rising to full height, groaning, some, in arcs
>>>
>>> yet widening in which she swings pendulously
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> eventually an half-circle is reached.
>>>
>>> Axles and con-rods bud; and, over that,
>>>
>>> the sound of half-vocalised moaning. Our eyes
>>>
>>> move back on a broad angle; and we can see
>>>
>>> that she is part of a car being driven
>>>
>>> across pleasant countryside by a man
>>>
>>> with his foot down on the accelerator.
>>>
>>> He has a smile. He turns on loud radio.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The woman's noise continues and increases;
>>>
>>> and, above the sound of a broadcast, the man
>>>
>>> hears a fault of peculiar symptoms.
>>>
>>> He stops the car and listens; the anguish
>>>
>>> near silenced, but ,immediately, not quite.
>>>
>>> He opens the door and the pain sound stops. He goes
>>>
>>> to the car front. The sun shines. He walks backwards,
>>>
>>> away from the car.
>>>
>>> Focus upon the man,
>>>
>>> on to the torso, his chest and his head's
>>>
>>> lower half. He has a respiratory complaint.
>>>
>>> He wheezes. His eyes glint. The sun reflects
>>>
>>> from desolate blue sea, each eye a small globe,
>>>
>>> one of which we are approaching. We cross
>>>
>>> the coast of Africa and head inland.
>>>
>>> The course of a large river staggers across.
>>>
>>> We climb and the river becomes a vein in a wrist.
>>>
>>> We rise further and the whole of Africa fills
>>>
>>> half our picture. Beyond the horizon,
>>>
>>> the wall of a nose rises to occlude the sun.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Soon we've spanned a world, zigzagging, rising,
>>>
>>> falling to make detail or take broad views.
>>>
>>> Crossing the Irish Sea, we lose both height
>>>
>>> and speed. We descend into moist clouds, with Wales
>>>
>>> hardly visible, and out over scrappy
>>>
>>> woods in central England.
>>>
>>> People look up,
>>>
>>> but we don't see; till, on an unlit road,
>>>
>>> we see the flash of a small torch as a man
>>>
>>> walks to his car, gets in, and slams its door
>>>
>>> then starts the engine.
>>>
>>> And our feet touch the decaying earth surface
>>>
>>> of uncut grass and the dank fallen leaves.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> She is turned and turned on a complex winch.
>>>
>>> The noise of human distress is rising up.
>>>
>>> She's spun quickly in his steaming kitchen.
>>>
>>> She's swerved to avoid legs of police horses
>>>
>>> and a truncheon descending. She rushes to grab
>>>
>>> food from the back of a lorry; flailing her arms,
>>>
>>> she spins, the propeller of an overhead fan,
>>>
>>> wailing with hurt in a queue in jostles in a crash
>>>
>>> in an argument. She stumbles on steep hills;
>>>
>>> trees fall and crush the beneath bushes. Her too.
>>
>
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
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If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
Thomas De Quincey
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