“Henry in twilight is on his own”
strikes me as a sad line. The main context is philosophical—he has few ideological
mentors left at this point. Everyone seems so comparatively dull and stupid,
and it’s especially distressing when you realize that your own consciousness is
dull and stupid to begin with. But this is also an assessment of the writer’s
life and prospects more broadly. He’s on his own, in his twilight. It’s sad
partly because I’m one year younger than this guy was when he ended it
all, and I can tell anyone who cares that I don’t feel as if I’m in my twilight
yet. Quite the opposite in fact. If I may be physically on the backside, there
is still much mentally, spiritually, and creatively left to experience and accomplish.
But that line is coming from a writer who, a decade younger than I am now, had already
had his moment and was feeling the end approaching. Serious alcoholism, mental
anguish, constant smoking, these all take a devastating toll, and pretty
clearly he knew what he was up against. It seems to me that it would be okay to
face death if you can look back and say you loved life, didn’t waste it, played
the hand you were dealt with all the skill you managed to develop. If you threw
your cards on the floor, then the approaching moment must be tougher to accost.
Not that that was exactly what he did—to be a writer is to live too. He did
that. But his body, through abuse, and thus his whole mind and spirit by
extension, was giving out. Abused past its ability to respond with vitality. Madness
threatens from there—scary. I don’t brood on my own physical vitality and
incipient depression and madness that much because I don’t feel the need. The Dream Songs will force this avenue
of brooding if you let them have any influence at all. But only for me when
engaged with the work. On my own, at least as a writer, I’m like an ebony jewelwing
damselfly, skipping unnoticed through the undergrowth, dazzling iridescent blue
and green if you stop to look, maybe, but few do, not when there are
woodpeckers and goldfinches and swallowtail butterflies, and flowers, foxes and
deer, adorable little stripy chipmunks in the woods, on and on, clamoring for
attention. I think that might just be my new emblem.
But enough about me.
Creek
Pool, Summer Day
If there is madness along the
creek
Let the minnows live it
Sunken under the sun-steaming
Algae-sodden surface
Never stilling their silver
flanks
Since the bass that keeps
To his hole under the grass bank
Ventures every dim blue evening
To inhale quick little fishes
Restlessness describes
The minnows' subsequent lot
Scribbling their panic
In crazy runes across the blank
pool
That spell “movement
is our only hope
to rest is to cease
moving” and moving
So their sustaining
Movement maddens
Without cease
Catatonic frogs hold motionless
In the green bankside slime:
Knowing, in their still
Spotted way, that not-stillness
Betrays their spots to the
Snakes that watch:
The snakes watch:
They wait, watch:
Waiting.
DragonFlies
on
The Attack.
changing
Direction.
Darting
hungry
Here anD
Gone
and back
Tall heron’s bill an ivory sword
—a lighting
lunge—
then she floats away,
over the still pool
lifting on the soft heat
like a long blue dragon.
Concatenation of flitterings
Glittering blue and green
Sheening in the shade
Made of tinsel and foil
Like oil on the pool’s
Cool surface. Jewelwings
Cling to the heavy air
Fair and sparkling
Sparking my notice
This, the unassuming shy
Fly, damsel at her vanity.
KZ
No comments:
Post a Comment