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.

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.