Nerja Players radio show, 25 June 2009
Stop
all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from
barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled
drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let
aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling
on the sky the message He
Is Dead,
Put
crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the
traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He
was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my
Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought
that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The
stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack
up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep
up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Wow. But the dead person is indistinct; and in fact the poem wasn't even written for a particular one. Even more detached and impersonal is this:
A
Slumber did my Spirit Seal
William
Wordsworth, 1799
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
My
third poem of this general class is John
Donne's
A
nocturnal upon st. Lucy's day, being the shortest day.
This famous work was probably written in 1627 when both Donne's friend Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and his daughter Lucy Donne died. But you wouldn't know this from the magnificent subjective baroque excess of the poem.
TIS
the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's, who scarce seven
hours herself unmasks ;
The sun is
spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs,
no constant rays ;
The
world's whole sap is sunk ;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth
hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead
and interr'd ; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who
am their epitaph.
Study
me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at
the next spring ;
For I am every dead thing,
In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from
nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness ;
He
ruin'd me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death—things
which are not.
All
others, from all things, draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form,
spirit, whence they being have ;
I, by Love's
limbec, am the grave
Of
all, that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so
Drown'd the whole world, us two ;
oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to
aught else ; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us
carcasses.
But
I am by her death—which word wrongs her—
Of the first
nothing the elixir grown ;
Were I a man, that I were
one
I needs must know ; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,
Some ends, some
means ; yea plants, yea stones detest,
And love ; all, all some
properties invest.
If I an ordinary nothing were,
As shadow, a
light, and body must be here.
But
I am none ; nor will my sun renew.
You lovers, for whose sake the
lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,
Since she enjoys her long
night's festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This
hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the
day's deep midnight is.
In contrast, the epigraph poem to Rudyard Kipling's tale How the Alphabet was Made, from Just So Stories, first published 1902. Three years earlier, Kipling's eldest daughter Josephine had died in New York of pneumonia at the age of six. In context, it's clearly about the loss. The poem is technically a much inferior work to my first three; but unlike them it brings tears to my eyes: I think because the dead girl is present. And this holds even though what Kipling has to say about her is very conventional, unlike the beautifully characterised Taffumai Tegumai of the prose story.
OF all the Tribe of Tegumai
Who cut that figure, none remain,--
On Merrow Down the cuckoos cry
The silence and the sun remain.
But as the faithful years return
And hearts unwounded sing again,
Comes Taffy dancing through the fern
To lead the Surrey spring again.
Her brows are bound with bracken-fronds,
And golden elf-locks fly above;
Her eyes are bright as diamonds
And bluer than the skies above.
In mocassins and deer-skin cloak,
Unfearing, free and fair she flits,
And lights her little damp-wood smoke
To show her Daddy where she flits.
For far--oh, very far behind,
So far she cannot call to him,
Comes Tegumai alone to find
The daughter that was all to him.
To finish, a great poem: the anonymous Border ballad Helen of Kirkconnell. that combines deep feeling – in fact rage and despair - with a similar recognition of the dead person. It was based on a true incident during the reign of Mary Queen of Scots. Helen Irving, walking in Annandale with her betrothed lover Adam Fleming, was killed by a shot aimed at Adam by a disappointed rival. The poem is put into Adam's mouth.
I WISH I were where Helen lies,
Night and day on me she cries;
O that I were where Helen lies,
On fair Kirkconnell lea!
Curst be the heart that thought the thought,
And curst the hand that fired the shot,
When in my arms burd Helen dropt,
And died to succour me!
O think
na ye my heart was sair,
When my Love dropp’d and spak nae
mair!
There did she swoon wi’ meikle care,
On fair
Kirkconnell lea.
As I
went down the water side,
None but my foe to be my guide,
None
but my foe to be my guide,
On fair Kirkconnell lea;
I
lighted down my sword to draw,
I hackèd him in pieces
sma’,
I hackèd him in pieces sma’,
For her
sake that died for me.
O Helen
fair, beyond compare!
I’ll mak a garland o’ thy hair,
Shall bind my heart for evermair,
Until the day I dee!
O that I
were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries;
Out of
my bed she bids me rise,
Says, ‘Haste, and come to me!’
O Helen
fair! O Helen chaste!
If I were with thee, I’d be blest,
Where thou lies low and taks thy rest,
On fair Kirkconnell
lea.
I wish
my grave were growing green,
A winding-sheet drawn owre my een,
And I in Helen’s arms lying,
On fair Kirkconnell lea.
I wish I
were where Helen lies!
Night and day on me she cries;
And I
am weary of the skies,
For her sake that died for me.