Sunday, September 13, 2009

For Dawn


This is a statue of Patrick Kavanaugh along one of the canals in Dublin. He often came there while recuperating from cancer, the story goes. This poem was written by him and is obviously a reference to his mother. I found it in a book of his complete poems I bought this summer in Galway. I first heard of Kavanaugh in a book entitled Irish Poets Since Yeats and among the poems quoted in that book is one called The Great Hunger. If I have a chance I will quote from that one someday, I still read it every so often and try to puzzle out its message. But today I wanted to share this poem written in 1945 when Patrick's mother died. However, as the title of this post suggests, what I saw was an image of my wife. Not dead, naturally, but as my helpmate and support over the years of our marriage. Like no one else, I believe, Dawn truly 'knows' me. . . better than I know myself, I am sure. I think that this poem captures my feelings about her.

IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

Died November 10th, 1945

You will have the road gate open, the front door ajar
The kettle boiling and a table set
By the window looking out at the sycamores-
And your loving heart lying in wait

For me coming up among the popular trees.
You'll know my breathing and my walk
And it will be a summer evening on those roads
Lonely with leaves of thought.

We will be choked with the grief of things growing,
the silence of dark-green air
Life too rich - the nettles, docks and thistles
all answering the prodigal's prayer.

You will know I am coming though I send no word
For you were lover who could tell
A man's thoughts -my thoughts-though I hid them-
Through you I knew Woman and did not fear her spell.




Monday, September 7, 2009

World War Two Begins


Seventy years ago this week, on September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland and began the Second World War. For all the media attention over the last few years concerning D-Day and other WWII anniversaries, I was surprised that this day came and went without comment. I wonder how many years it will be before we forget the dates and significance WW II had on world and US history. An entire generation of Americans, no less than the Europeans and others in the world, were affected by the war and its political aftermath. Yet not a word about this date. Here is a poem by W.H. Auden. He had left England, where he was born and was living in New York City. One the one hand, you have to read this poem from the perspective of the Depression, the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Fascism throughout the world. On the other hand, I believe every poem holds a message for the present as well. So what is the message here?

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-Second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September Night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
the music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow,
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exist alone;
Hunger allows no choice
to the citizen or the police;
We must love another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages;
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleagered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.