I haven't written poetry in a long time. My spirit was broken by the (non)-reaction to my poetry on Facebook, over years. I'll probably get back to it eventually.
I've just raided my archives looking for a poem. Most of them are poor, in my view. Here's one I wrote in Dublin Airport (of all places) some time early in the millennium. It's not bad, I think.
My entire life, I've had an obsession with memory and oblivion. Is it healthy? I don't know. It makes a poem, anyway.
A sure-nuff archivist has told me that wearing latex gloves is not encouraged in archives as it reduces dexterity. I'd heard that already, although I can't remember if it was before I'd written this poem, or afterward.
Dead Letters
Folded and read and folded so often now–The fingers that folded it first, the eyes that read
Stopped work last century. In latex gloves
The doctorate student folds it, wonders how
Her days will be replayed when she is dead.
Those hour-long evening phone calls that she loves
Will leave no trace. What will her photos say?
She smiled at weddings, liked to dress in green.
She’s poured her soul through a keyboard now for years
But none of that was ever stored away
In a cardboard box. Her life unrolls on screen;
Each day gets written, sent, and disappears.
What then? The video her sister made
One Halloween? A camera never caught
One motion of the soul. What’s to be seen
In a winter’s evening endlessly replayed?
No trace or what she loved or what she thought–
Life’s glories gone as if they’d never been.
She thought of all that’s tapped out, signalled, said;
An endless thirst for words endlessly fed;
And all will die before these words of the dead.
Very good! Larkinesque!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I think it is rather Larkinesque. Probably the ghost of Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album hovering over it!
DeleteIt seems that this is a common theme in poetry and probably one the world needs to think more about. Here is another lesser known Irish poem on the similiar theme, that i ran across in Joyce Kilmer's anthology of Catholic poetry.
ReplyDeleteDREAMING OF CITIES DEAD
By Eleanor Rogers Cox
Dreaming of cities dead,
Of bright Queens vanished,
Of kings whose names were but as seed wind-blown
E’en when white Patrick’s voice shook Tara’s throne,
My way along the great world-street I tread,
And keep the rites of Beauty lost, alone.
Cairns level with the dust—
Names dim with Time’s dull rust—
Afar they sleep on many a wind-swept hill,
The beautiful, the strong of heart and will—
On whose pale dreams no sunrise joy shall burst,
No harper’s song shall pierce with battle-thrill.
Long from their purpled heights,
Their reign of high delights,
The Queens have wended down Death’s mildewed stair,
Leaving a scent of lilies on the air,
To gladden Earth through all her days and nights,
That once she cherished anything so fair.
Thank you! That is very good. I like the slow, meditative metre. I'd never heard of that poet, and it's interesting to have an emphasis on dead Queens particularly.
Delete...we could add to the poignancy today that the her photos were lost in cyberspace and no material copies ever existed to leave a trace of .... (Well done of course)
ReplyDeleteThanks! Yes, indeed, photos today are much more immaterial and transitory than ever before. I like the description of the life cycle of digital records, from an expert in the field: "Five years or eternity, whichever comes first."
Delete