Oh, neatly done, Max. It gets better the deeper in (& shorter lines), but that also depends on where it begins…
Still, it’s interesting that the further from philosophy (& its lingo)the poem gets, the more inviting it feels…
Doug
On Sep 23, 2015, at 9:26 AM, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Enlightenment
>
> Diderot, Voltaire,
> and several lesser lights,
> came to my room
>
> in my student days,
> promising company
> and ‘enlightenment’.
>
> I fancied them, and fancied
> they’d fancy me. My town,
> my country, seemed run by
>
> sermonizing churchmen
> and priests; some deferred to
> the Pope in far-off Rome,
>
> with their banning of books,
> movies advised against.
> Who was there now to show us
>
> how to be enlightened?
> Oh there was Bertrand Russell,
> old Bernard Shaw, such a tease -
>
> good for a light evening
> in the drafty hall next to
> prim St Andrews Church
>
> (tolerant Presbyterians
> there), but Shaw never
> offended anyone, it seemed.
>
> My professors put on
> Moliere, churchy Eliot,
> Shakespeare, worthily.
>
> A man from England,
> name of Ronnie, put on
> Beckett - testing us -
>
> two hours of hopelessness,
> so far as we could tell.
> He and his cast played up
>
> the misery, played down
> the jokes. Waiting for what?
> This was all just before t.v
>
> kept folk at home turning
> everything into personalities
> and showbiz. Ideas,
>
> I whispered, freedom!
> contrariety!
> possibility!
>
> 2
>
> Young David Hume, finding Scotland
> dour, short of enlightenment,
> lived for years in France, that mix
>
> of light and dark, quietly
> doubting such old standbys as
> miracles, and soul and self.
>
> OK to the first, second
> and third troubled me, no thinker.
> My uncertain student self
>
> first met my Edinburgh prof
> in the new Hume Tower
> (‘Write on Auden? If you must…
>
> he’s stranger than you think.’) -
> listened hard, leaned back
> breaking one of his new chairs.
>
> It boded ill. The chair yielded up
> its selfhood, my own quavered,
> never quite recovered.
>
> 3
>
> On his Melbourne campus
> where he winters briefly,
> the poet-philosopher
>
> acknowledged as we
> passed, my shy smile shyly.
> He would not know of my -
>
> shall we say? complicity?
> working to redeem in poetry
> the body from alienation
>
> from its spiritual company.
> But he the philosopher
> knew what he was doing.
>
> My efforts were thoughtless
> as could be. He had a grip
> on Plato and on every
>
> century down to today,
> sorting the complexity,
> pointing ways forward,
>
> moving himself on
> from his early thin
> wooden spirituality.
>
> 4
>
> In repose
> it was a face
> of some grace;
>
> slow from brow
> down her nose
> he would trace
>
> to a place
> where he’d pause,
> pursed lips
>
> nearing hers,
> murmuring:
> ‘is this yours?’ -
>
> opening
> mouth with tongue
> seeking hers.
>
> This awoke
> in her cheek
> a slight blush:
>
> ‘your moustache -
> it tickles.’
> Her fingers
>
> pressed back
> his whiskers,
> smilingly
>
> tweaked his ear.
> ‘Don’t disgrace
> yourself, dear.
>
> Not so fast.’
> Unfailingly
> he’d draw back
>
> a while,
> a little while.
>
> 5
>
> One at a time
> each grape
> found its way
>
> from the stem
> in his hand
> to his open
>
> mouth. Munch
> and gone. Next!
> So the bunch
>
> green from the
> greengrocer
> freshly rinsed
>
> refreshed him.
> Elegant
> the bare stalk
>
> remaining
> in his hand,
> like a stick-
>
> insect standing
> many-legged
> and still, while
>
> its prey or
> enemy
> is confirmed.
>
> Lingering
> tongue-tastes,
> syllables,
>
> rest, stasis.
>
> 6
>
> The bed-sit of Venus!
> For her brief stopover
> she needed only some
>
> rented place with
> a good bathroom
> and a balcony and
>
> of course a bed.
> Once installed she
> voluptuously
>
> sprawled waiting
> for encounters.
> Which duly came,
>
> homage was paid,
> tribute exacted,
> grateful visitors
>
> went their various
> ways, content. Sic
> transit gloria bed-sit.
>
> 7
>
> It looms like
> a glitch in time,
> or do I mean
>
> ‘borrowed time’? -
> which we may feel
> once pressed,
>
> we all live on.
> Shall we ponder
> the lender?
>
> Or make do
> with the loan,
> expiry date
>
> unknown,
> nearing that
> glitch in time.
>
> 8
>
> In his tiny cottage
> in Biggar near the Border,
> Scotland’s senior poet
>
> and contrarian said to me,
> coughing over the whisky
> we’d brought him, ‘New Zealand?
>
> Ye have poets there, I know.
> But why imitate Auden?
> Take the long view. We’re
>
> in the nineteen-sixties...
> the Enlightenment was
> Scottish - Hume and all that.
>
> Light! - you know, don’t you,
> Goethe’s dying words were
> Scottish: Mair licht, mair licht!’
>
> Quoting himself as we left:
> ‘Deep surroondin’ darkness
> is aye the price o’ licht.’
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Done in by creation itself.
I mean the gods. Not us. Well us too.
The gods moved into books. Who wrote the books?
We wrote the books. In whose dream, then are we dreaming?
Robert Kroetsch.
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