Still digesting it, Max :-)


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On 18 May 2016 at 17:06, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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.
>



-- 
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
Books available through Walleah Press
http://walleahpress.com.au