(Poem #173)Critics Nightwatch Once more he tried, before he slept, to rule his ranks of words. They broke from his planned choir, lolled, slouched and kept their tone, their pitch, their meaning crude; huddled in cliches; when pursued turned with mock elegance to croak his rival's tunes. They would not sing. The scene that nagged his sleep away flashed clear again: the local king of verse, loose-collared and loose-lipped. read from a sodden manuscript, drinking with anyone who'd pay, drunk, in the critic's favourite bar. "Hear the voice of the bard!" he bellowed, "Poets are lovers. Critics are mean, solitary masturbators. Come here, and join the warm creators." The critic, whom no drink had mellowed, turned on his heel. Rough laughter scoured his reddening neck. The poet roared "Run home, and take that face that soured your mother's lovely milk from spite. Piddle on what you cannot write." At home alone the critic poured gall on the poet's work in polished careful prose. He tore apart meaning and metaphor, demolished diction, syntax, metre, rhyme; called his entire works a crime against the integrity of art, and lay down grinning, quick, he thought, with a great poem that would make plain his power to all. Once more he fought with words. Sleep came. He dreamed he turned to a light vapour, seeped and burned in wordless cracks where grain on grain of matter grated; reassumed his human shape, and called by name each grain to sing, conducting, plumed in lightning, their obedient choir. Dressed as a bride for his desire towards him, now meek, the poet came. Light sneaked beside his bed. The birds began their insistent questioning of silence, and the poet's words prompted by daylight rasped his raw nerves, and the waking world he saw was flat with prose and would not sing. |
Critics Nightwatch -- Gwen Harwood
My Death -- Raymond Carver
(Poem #172)My Death If I'm lucky, I'll be wired every whichway in a hospital bed. Tubes running into my nose. But try not to be scared of me, friends! I'm telling you right now that this is okay. It's little enough to ask for at the end. Someone, I hope, will have phoned everyone to say, "Come quick, he's failing!" And they will come. And there will be time for me to bid goodbye to each of my loved ones. If I'm lucky, they'll step forward and I'll be able to see them one last time and take that memory with me. Sure, they might lay eyes on me and want to run away and howl. But instead, since they love me, they'll lift my hand and say "Courage" or "It's going to be all right." And they're right. It is all right. It's just fine. If you only knew how happy you've made me! I just hope my luck holds, and I can make some sign of recognition. Open and close my eyes as if to say, "Yes, I hear you. I understand you." I may even manage something like this: "I love you too. Be happy." I hope so! But I don't want to ask for too much. If I'm unlucky, as I deserve, well, I'll just drop over, like that, without any chance for farewell, or to press anyone's hand. Or say how much I cared for you and enjoyed your company all these years. In any case, try not to mourn for me too much. I want you to know I was happy when I was here. And remember I told you this a while ago - April 1984. But be glad for me if I can die in the presence of friends and family. If this happens, believe me, I came out ahead. I didn't lose this one. |
I Hear a River Thro' the Valley Wander -- Trumbull Stickney
(Poem #171)I Hear a River Thro' the Valley Wander I hear a river thro' the valley wander Whose water runs, the song alone remaining. A rainbow stands and summer passes under. |
Poetry -- Don Paterson
(Poem #170)Poetry In the same way that the mindless diamond keeps one spark of the planet's early fires trapped forever in its net of ice, it's not love's later heat that poetry holds, but the atom of the love that drew it forth from the silence: so if the bright coal of his love begins to smoulder, the poet hears his voice suddenly forced, like a bar-room singer's -- boastful with his own huge feeling, or drowned by violins; but if it yields a steadier light, he knows the pure verse, when it finally comes, will sound like a mountain spring, anonymous and serene. Beneath the blue oblivious sky, the water sings of nothing, not your name, not mine. |