What an interesting poem, Max, fully justifying its four-part structure.
The involving/cajoling of readers into the dream sections works really well
I think.
I accept your imagery of the struggling sparrow but do wonder whether these
sprightly, deft-clawed birds do ever become so entangled.
I can hear C W-C's voice in that quick rejoinder.
Dickins it still is to me, too, having worked there as a teenager after
school.
Others will know more to say on the Babel section no doubt.
Bill
On Wednesday, 18 May 2016, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Readers, I Dreamed
>
> 1. In a Manner of Speaking
>
> Dear readers, how are you all
> enjoying my new poem -
> OK so far? - opens well?
>
> I say all - as if you’re plural,
> if not multiple,
> however alone you are
>
> as you read. Alone -
> but not lonely?
> We keep each other
>
> kindly company.
> Truly, I have trust
> in what we can achieve
>
> together, a sort of
> double-jointed, double-
> handed enterprise:
>
> like a sparrow tangled
> in a spring-green hedge
> a phrase tries to emerge.
>
> What arrives is like
> a simile, trailing twigs
> and green debris.
>
> The hedge continues
> briefly trembling,
> subsides to stillness.
>
> The sparrow continues
> on its morning tasks
> near where it’s emerged from.
>
> Is it nesting time? -
> well concealed. Is some
> nest deep inside it home
>
> for a sparrow family?
> Are you still with me?
> I like to think so,
>
> and me with you - surely
> you are, in a figurative
> manner of speaking?
>
> 2. In My Doggerel Dream
>
> I heard word that Chris
> Wallace-Crabbe, Melbourne’s
> venerable poet and general
> all-rounder, had taken up -
>
> metalwork! Soon after,
> Chris turned up with, in tow,
> his first major project,
> the size of a small car,
>
> highly-figured brass plates
> on all sides. I said to him:
> ‘I hear you’ve interested
> the Post Office in this,
>
> Chris. I can’t see the slot.’
> ‘Discreetly placed, Max.
> Yes, they’ve asked for
> a score, or more, one
>
> at least for every big
> town across Australia.’
> As if they’d get folk
> posting mail again.
>
> Now I could see the brass
> figurations were snails.
> What logic was this?
> Dream logic, I guess.
>
> My car was jammed full
> with frozen goods from Coles
> in North Balwyn
> which my wife’s parents
>
> still call Dickins.
> I pressed on Chris
> some fresh-baked sponge cake
> which he tried to resist
>
> with a pained grimace.
> He took one slice
> in a plastic dish,
> returning me the rest.
>
> ‘We creatives must eat,’
> each acknowledged each.
>
> 3. Me and Isaac Babel
>
> Isaac Babel is available for you
> to interview, the jingling words reached me -
>
> provided I provide a true
> (non-spy) interpreter. Strange - I knew,
>
> as he did not, his waiting fate -
> that firing squad ordered by Beria.
>
> This called for great discretion from me.
> My first, anxious visit to the Soviet Union -
>
> reading and rereading 'Red Cavalry'.
> How shocking they still were, those stories:
>
> lawlessness, hopes smashed, more cruelty
> than compassion. What strength! - to have seen
>
> so much, and written down what those in power
> dreaded being known, or didn’t they care?
>
> We met in Odessa. He insisted
> his crim Jews, now gone, were true fiction.
>
> Exile would be safer, Mr Babel. He nodded.
> My family want me in the West with them.
>
> My work is here. Filming Gorky’s books, you know.
> Now I write the truth for later readers, when
>
> things improve, then Russia can be honest again.
> I left him sad. Why waste his time with me? -
>
> foreign, behaving secretively.
> Years passed. Generations. Some reading.
>
> 4. If I Say
>
> as in my dream I was about to
> (meeting you nowhere in particular,
> uncertain of past and future)
>
> how lucky I have been to know you,
> you will hear in what I say
> some foreshadowed farewell
>
> grateful but ominous
> acknowledging how some time
> sooner maybe than felt before
>
> that ‘have been’ may change
> to ‘was’. Soon maybe second
> person ‘you’ will change to third.
>
> How lucky I was to know her.
> It assumes of course the ‘I’
> in this survives the ‘you’.
>
> Yet the farewell might just be
> one that gets said last thing
> before a going away, some
>
> ordinary separation kindly
> Time may permit to end.
> See you soon, I trust.
>
> When shall we two meet again?
> May we both survive this
> so uncertain separation.
>
> In this life, this we prefer,
> such return, such reunion.
> Don’t distract with notion
>
> of afterlife, after death...
> is death. Yes, you’re hinting
> what may one of us suffer
>
> outliving the other.
> If I should say (which I won’t)
> ‘let it not be you’ - how cruel
>
> the unintended under-thought,
> to wish either dark
> alternative on another.
>
> So, better not to broach any
> of this whether under bright light
> face to face or dreaming darkly.
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