"Who, after all, do we find more interesting than ourselves? Lyric poetry feeds this narcissism, telling poets they’re special individuals whose perceptions are so finely honed that they can transform banal observations and quotidian dramas into art simply through the force of their presentation." (Brooke Clark, The Narcissism of Contemporary Poetry, The Walrus, April, 2019).
Fair point but I'll keep trying.
Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self. - W. H. Auden
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Clive James has died after a long illness (28 November 2019)
From 'Japanese Maple'
My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:
Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colors will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.
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RHL poems
The placement test
Late in the morning, the glass door near my desk has a label:
'Exam in progress Please use other door'.
I hear voices - the murmuring soundtrack of a listening test.
See one candidate, hunched shoulders and black hair;
the flicker of a pencil.
In Chengdu, China, early in the morning, a woman is on a stairwell, pausing, panting. Far below, outside, in the still air, a man is crouching, unlocking a bicycle leant against a low wall.
Their daughter is in a faraway country.
Silence. The end of the test. The student leans back in the chair, stretching her arms up.
The woman takes weary steps to the next floor.
The man is pedaling on his bicycle now, wobbling, disappearing around a corner.
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The death of God, so it was said
Nietzsche's madman ran shouting:
I never heard him pass this way:
Heard only echoes, after the final sung 'Amen'.
I don't expect special treatment; none at all,
but live for the hour when, like Yeats in a crowded London shop,
with his open book and empty cup,
I can bless and can be blessed.
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Sea surface
Massive ocean, heaving, rearing,
Thickening, warming, plastic bearing;
Lifting with fanned fingers of foam the detritus of our ways,
With the screech of gulls and the slap of spray.
Pale-pink rills, white fluted horror:
Shoals of silver fish, shimmering, startled,
Numberless slithers, wheeling, darting.
Go deeper, fish, while you can, where the cold clear waters run.
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An old man
I read about an old man whose grandchild went right through high school while he was still searching for the beginning of the roll of sellotape.
I pick at the life's roll, too, trying to find that crinkle in the smooth seal, with urgent pecking. Life slips by, ah, it slips by. The surface is too shiny.
And time is slippery. At 35 you hit an oil slick. I slide towards the years of sitting, gazing and, I hope, remembering.
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Words
I am a dragon, but
words pressed into service in my writing,
do not take or gain, or breathe fire.
They gasp and gape, like carp in the pond,
and descend through weeds,
to silt and mud.
Passerby, onlooker, bend to the water,
hold and behold, please tell me,
see, perhaps, some time, a shimmer of deep red or a marvel of bright orange.
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On the Mountain - Mount Qingcheng, Sichuan province
We climbed shiny-worn steps through scattered sunlight,
all the winding way up the Taoist mountain.
At the top, at last, panting and looking around, we stopped.
Geoffrey heaved off his rucksack, and set down a bottle of New Zealand white wine.
We sat in a circle beside an ancient palace,
catching our breath, clutching our glasses;
talk and laughter rose like the smoke of incense into the still, high air.
To the west, over a low crumbling wall,
there were waves of mountains,
powder blue,
hanging in a haze,
running away to the distant mountains of Tibet.
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Bargaining
The price is more likely to go down if you're both laughing.
'I want only one! Not three!'
'I'm not a wealthy man.'
'Because you're my special friend, I'll offer you .... '
'Sorry, my hearing's not so good. I thought you said 50RMB!'
In this encounter, is there a faint, faraway echo of ancient times?
Were there laughing days on the Silk Road
when merchants spat on the ground and
announced their wares and their prices?
Did those travellers chuckle and shout as they
hauled the leather bags of spices and elixirs down from their camels?
Or were their faces gaunt with fatigue after
a long dry journey? Solemn with the effort
to speak at all? Quiet and desperate for the
strange coins or ceramics or silk?