Love Poetry Out Loud (14 page)

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou seest the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

W. S. Merwin

S
leep softly my old love

my beauty in the dark

night is a dream we have

as you know as you know

night is a dream you know

an old love in the dark

around you as you go

without end as you know

in the night where you go

sleep softly my old love

without end in the dark

in the love that you know

 

Going Gentle

The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas famously pleaded with his dying father not to “go gentle into that good night.” In this poem, which evokes Thomas's poem through its title and its repetitive, incantatory structure (something common to many Welsh verse forms), W. S. Merwin seems not to find the prospect of nightfall quite so worrisome as he and his old love approach it
.

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on
.

“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least—at least I mean what I say — That's the same thing, you know.”

“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat' is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see'!”

—Lewis Carroll,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

 

IN PRAISE OF THE INARTICULATE

Good communication, counselors will tell you, is the key to a lasting relationship. Poets, being poets, would prefer to let their poems do the talking for them— which should be the same thing but somehow isn't. Any wonder that there are so many poems about broken hearts?

 

Too Much Information

Writing teachers try to drill into their students the principle that it's better to show than to tell. Readers prefer dealing with the concrete and specific than with abstract notions (such as “love”). Here William Blake learns the consequences of too much tell and not enough show
.

Pain =
Attempt
.

William Blake

N
ever pain to tell thy Love

Love that never told can be

For the gentle wind does move

Silently invisibly.

I told my love I told my love,

I told her all my heart

Trembling cold in ghastly fears

Ah! she doth depart

Soon as she was gone from me

A traveller came by

Silently invisibly:

O was no deny

Robert Herrick

Y
ou say I love not, 'cause I do not play

Still with your curls and kiss the time away.

You blame me, too, because I can't devise

Some sport to please those babies in your eyes:

By Love's religion, I must here confess it,

The most I love when I the least express it.

Small griefs find tongues; full casks are ever found

To give, if any, yet but little sound.

Deep waters noiseless are; and this we know,

That chiding streams betray small depths below.

So when Love speechless is she doth express

A depth in love, and that depth bottomless.

Now since my love is tongueless, know me such,

Who speak but little 'cause I love so much.

 

Quiet Waters Run Deep

Hollywood suggests that most women prefer the strong, silent types. Such, at least, would be Robert Herrick's hope, as he argues in this sonnet. Somehow his words ring hollow
.

Full casks =
An empty barrel makes a loud noise when “thunked”; not so one that's full
.

 

EMPTY WORDS

Emerson called poetry “a meter-making argument.” Sadly, the evidence of the ages suggests that it's nearly impossible to argue someone into love. Rhetoric is what poets have to work with, though. T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats are two of modern literature's most eloquent arguers. See what good it does them in the next two poems
.

 

S'io credessi =
In this prefatory excerpt from Dante's
Inferno,
a spirit in hell agrees to speak candidly, thinking that he's talking to one of the damned. Prufrock's in much the same situation, his doubt and self-loathing coming through
.

Let us go =
It may help to imagine Prufrock walking through town on the way to a tea party, probably talking to himself, or an imaginary companion from among the damned
.

Like a patient =
He begins with a showy and inappropriate simile, and follows up with several more gloomy, hopeless figures of speech
.

Question =
Just as he's building up to a rhetorical point, he is interrupted by an imagined “stupid” question
.

In the room =
This image distracts him for a moment
.

The yellow fog =
Another fumbling figure of speech — metaphor this time. Eliot, a cat lover, was the author of
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats,
from which was derived Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical
Cats.

 

Every Trick in the Book

It's often said that Eliot's famous “love song” isn't a love song at all. But let's give Old Possum the benefit of the doubt here: it's a love song, just Prufrock's inept one. Prufrock, the character who's speaking (or singing) it, is a showy rhetorician but a lousy troubadour. Try reading the poem as if you're someone trying every rhetorical trick in your arsenal to connect — to no avail
.

There will be time =
Prufrock frets about the party and gets all tangled up in his rhetoric, anticipating “stupid” questions like the one just asked
.

Morning coat =
He considers being a no-show at the party, then turns to another form of communication fashion and clothing. But, again, he fears he will be misunderstood
.

T. S. Eliot

S
'io credessi che mia risposta fosse

a persona che mai tornasse al mondo
,

questa fiamma staria senza più scosse
.

Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo

non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero
,

senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo
.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question …

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all —

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all —

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all —

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

It is perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?

. . . . . . . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . . . . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep … tired … or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here's no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all” —

If one, settling a pillow by her head,

Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.

That is not it, at all,”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor —

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

. . . . . . . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous —

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.