by Glyn Maxwell
Soon he was gone on his train, seldom seen, and here I am still in my attic, staying a while.
*
I knew it was Thursday morning. When you know Thursday like I do, you know when it’s Thursday morning. Books open on your desk. The fun’s both over and not started yet. You feel you’re in the wings, but the wings of what, who knows.
In my next dream – not so much dream as a fancy that got hold of the reins a while – the other six days of the week were hiding out in a hole-in-the-wall like a slapstick frontier gang. Monday was prowling at the threshold exhorting them to saddle up and fight back, Tuesday and Wednesday were hunched round the billycan, not our circus, not our monkey, Friday was turned to the cave-wall in gloom She always said she’d stand by me – Saturday was murmuring Who needs her I’ve got plans... Not a peep out of Sunday, all but entombed in wolfskins.
The gang faded, Thursday reigns. Outside the sky was low with cloud and whatever, I need a wolfskin. Then I’ll be fit for teaching.
*
How do I love you? Let me count the ways! –
I love you to the depth & breadth & height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.
I love you to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need by sun and candlelight –
I love you freely, as men strive for Right, –
I love you purely, as they turn from Praise;
I love you with the passion, put to use
In my old griefs. . . and with my childhood’s faith:
I love you with the love I seemed to lose
With my lost Saints, – I love you with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love you better after my death.
I didn’t know what to tell my class about gracious stricken Elizabeth Barrett of Wimpole Street, who seized happiness from oppression, except she didn’t write that poem. I thought I’d substitute you for all her thous and thees, so they’d hear her voice more clearly.
How is that better than paraphrasing Shakespeare? It isn’t, but most Romantic or Victorian poetry could do with salvage from the waters of archaism, the veiling sea-changes. Why. Because unlike Shakespeare those Victorians wrote in settled forms, forms that had set like, well, stone. It becomes a problem. Cushions on stone. They were comfy with tradition.
It’s why, for example, their verse-plays don’t work. It’s why T. S. Eliot, sharp thinker on tradition, eschewed the pentameter when he came to write his. Why I uneschewed it when I came to write mine I’d have told them in spring term, in the Paradigms of Drama class I would have taught (the official form for that is a shade of bird’s-egg green, you know) but I don’t think I’m invited.
Then again, I did know how to tell my class the avant-garde has been comfy for a century. More cushions on stone. You don’t need to like tradition to be tradition. If you don’t know when you’re comfy you’ll be a problem too one day. We’ll think you’re an old snapshot.
No one’s listening, I’m in bed.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways! What to say about Elizabeth. . .
First of all, love conquered. Some lives ring clear like bells, they beckon us somewhere. Their empty space is love, like in lullabies or gardens.
I wasn’t sure what to say about her husband either. My old teacher, when I was his young student, and he wasn’t that old, nor I that young, went around our class on Bay State Road, and asked us each to name a poet we didn’t get.
Though I wouldn’t say Robert Browning now, I did then. My teacher nodded, was not surprised, but asked why and I don’t know what I said but I suppose I found Browning messy, bric-a-brac, full of Italian names I had to look up – in the days that this meant leaving the desk – it was lords and lovers trailing pricey costumes on elaborate stage-sets.
I get it now. Voices in stories, stories in voices. Maybe the playwright in me was still too shy to put his hand up. How is a poet to find that mythical chimaera His Own Voice if his mind is cacophonous with disputatious folks, quarrelling norths and souths, bantering easts and wests?
So, that from Robert, genially setting voices free, and this from Robert too: voice riding the moment, telling its hapless truth between the centrifugal forces of rainy black-and-white Then (heritage, habit, order, pentameter) and misty rainbow Now (chaos, impulse, wonder, chat) – for what flashes in that friction is character, is relationship with the turning world, the authentic voice of one’s deal with Time.
Meet his murderous Duke:
. . .She had
A heart – how shall I say? – too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, ’t was all one!
Meet his painter Lippo Lippi, red-faced and red-handed in the red-light district, babbling to the cops:
. . .Who am I?
Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend
Three streets off – hes a certain. . . how d’ye call?
Master – a. . . Cosimo of the Medici,
I’the house that caps the corner. Boh! You were best!
And here’s an earthly bishop expiring, clocking who exactly has showed up at his deathbed:
Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews, sons mine. . . ah God, I know not! Well –
The onward impulse of form plays the onward impulse of life.
Right. That would take me six minutes. What to do with the other one hundred and fourteen. . .
Boh! I’ve remembered, given the circumstances, given the non grata of my persona, I would probably do nothing.
I got out of bed and started packing. Whether I’d leave or not today, or in a week, or never, my soul now took the lead and I was standing at my wardrobe, counting the number of shirts left to wear, two, one blue one black, taking the rest off hangers, folding jerseys into the enormous suitcase that had sat there all this time. I didn’t remember arriving. I was undoing the work of another. I would leave my books behind. I looked at the open page on the desk. The real thing:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth & breadth & height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace. . ..
Sickly housebound ‘Ba’, who would have to leave her life behind – her bed, her room, the Barretts, Wimpole Street, London, England – when love came calling in the form of Mr Browning. But she did, she fled with Robert – though her father threatened she’d be dead to him forever, and the wretched man meant it – they travelled and settled, they loved and were happy at the Casa Guidi, Firenze, they loved and were happy at the Casa Alberti, Siena.
This voice is one at peace with Time (I’d tell my class, wherever I may find them) and it’s love that made it so. We don’t do that in footnotes. I don’t teach a complex subject.
I mean, this is how poetry sounds when the white space is love. One lets the other be. Subject, object, one lets the other be.
*
As it happened, I wouldn’t teach a class that day, not Elizabeth nor Robert, for the day was zipping up its own dark coat, stone-deaf to all our plans.
It was the day I learned that one of us was gone. Gone, it was generally felt, for keeps.
I got ready and went out not knowing that yet, but as I neared the crossroads, hands in pockets, I saw a small group huddling and hugging in the numb white morning, quite a large and soon familiar group gathered at the rusty open gates of the church.
*
.. .lo, as they reached the mountain’s side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
; The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
Did I say, all? No! One was lame,
And could not dance the whole of the way;
And in after years, if you would blame
His sadness, he was used to say, –
‘It’s dull in our town since my playmates left!
I can’t forget that I’m bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me.
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new;
The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles’ wings:
And just as I became assured
My lame foot would be speedily cured,
The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the Hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before,
And never hear of that country more!’
*
Alas for Hamelin, Niall was gone.
His things were still in his room, but he hadn’t been seen since Sunday morning. Most everyone had congregated sadly, but it wasn’t quite clear why.
‘We were going to the Keys on Sunday night,’ Heath said as he lit up, me him and Roy and Claude to play pool right, but he wasn’t in his room. We left a note on his door, still nothing. Monday morning we got the warden guy to open up and he’s gone. All his things are there.’
So come on Heath he’s – met someone.
‘Who there’s no one, we’re all here. They looked everywhere.’
The wooded isle!
‘I said everywhere.’
He’s met someone you don’t know, man.
‘Nah he left everything.’
He’s Niall, he’s wandered off, like John Clare, he liked John, he’s just – he’s – walking through the fields.
‘Yeah without his shoes. Like you know him.’
Fine. Look. Why d’you not think he’ll come back? it’s not like you found – you know –
‘Well we found this,’ said Caroline, easing gravely into the group with a slim script of some kind in her woollen yellow gloves, ‘his collection. It was on his desk.’
What?
‘He left it on his desk,’ said Ollie, arm in arm with Iona McNair, setting his other hand on my shoulder as if to bring me into the place they had reached, ‘It is finished.’
The formal diction alerted me. Most of my class were gathered around now, in close, waiting for me to get it.
He’s, hasn’t he, he’s called it It Is Finished (I said, to show them I’d arrived) – it’s – going to all be blank (I was suddenly weak in all my limbs)
‘No,’ said Ollie, ‘weirder.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ Iona sighed, ‘we’re going to read the – work.’
‘Read one will you, old chief?’ said Lily taking my arm, ‘we waited for you to get back. Couldn’t do this shit without you. Mrs Finbow said this one.’
She passed me a folded sheet and as I reached for it I saw behind her, stationed by the railings, white-haired Rowena in her wheelchair looking at me. I went, and the students stayed behind me, closing into a ring that kept opening, smilingly, to incorporate new arrivals in their big warm frozen huddle, and from which I heard Lily cry out ‘Niallstock!’ like their talented young captain, and the others send it skywards in staggered voices weak and strong.
Hey Rowena.
‘Monsieur. What do you think of it?’
What.
‘The poem.’
I haven’t read it yet, I want to be alone to.
‘Fair enough.’
Rowena, why don’t they think Niall will come back?
(She looked away through the iron bars at all the illegible dumb mossy graves, breathed in and out, her breath the not-a-colour of her long lank hair) ‘Why don’t you ask them that?’
They think – because of that manuscript? Look, think it through, he handed in his work, he was proud of it, it was done, then he got homesick, he left Thanksgiving early I remember, Niall, yes, he was homesick he went home to wherever he was from, Home Counties or somewhere, he got that train that comes sometimes. . .
Rowena, it took him home, right? It took him home, to his, whatever he has, Home Counties, for Christmas, early Christmas, Sunday was what, the first, home for Advent, to open the first window on the calendar, the first window for his, his, his, little niece they have a bond, she missed him. . .
Uncle Niall you’re home! she was opening number 1, there was a Quality Street behind it, yay the red one, the strawberry-creme, she opened it, she’s eaten it, they’ve opened five by now! She’s eaten five by now and Niall’s sitting in the sitting-room, looking out at the frosty lawn, silly Christmas fairy-lights blinking in the arch of the window, he’s thinking about white space, answering daft questions from his friends from home, questions about his term here, his term studying poetry, you know he’s actually missing us, wished he hadn’t left so soon, but look there’s his little niece playing on the carpet christ or something, I’m not saying that’s where he is, that’s just – like – where I see him, but why can’t he be somewhere?
Rowena why can’t he be somewhere?
‘I know.’
What what what what what do you mean you know, you and Barry, jesus, what do you know?
‘I know you don’t accept it.’
Look Tina left. Come on. Tina left and I wanted her to stay.
‘Tina – Yeager?’
Ha! something you didn’t know, at last! I was sad, it made me sad she left. But I don’t think she’s – no more.
‘Where did I say I thought Niall was no more?’
We’ve gathered by a church, Rowena.
‘We’ve gathered by a village hall. And you ought to prepare your reading.’
*
‘It is finished. By Niall Prester.’
Caroline Jellicoe breathes at the lectern. No ones on the front row. We’re all on the second and third rows. I’m at the side because I’m one of the readers.
‘The poem is in square brackets. I suppose that means its not really the poem, or maybe it does, I never could remember, that, type of nonsense. . . the punctuation’s a bit, well, that was Niall, that’s Niall. . .’
She smiles apologetically. It’s freezing in here. We breathe white breath, despite a little bar-heater seething red in the corner.
I notice flowers in the vase on the sheeted piano and am wondering who replaced them when Caroline begins:
[something punchy to get us started
something to pretend Im here
Ill show I know my way round line-break
and stanza break
and note to self I better keep it short
so Ill knock off in a second
with something that really makes you think
go on then think]
*
Tall Iona leaves her coat with Orlando, who folds it sadly in his bliss. She’s wearing a dark blue dress with a flower. Civilized sweet woman. She pauses at the breaks like I taught her, and won’t say the bad word, as if we really were in church.
[its probably about time
I showed you I can rhyme
if I want to I just dont
so I wont I could also show you
my
short lines and my long lines but Ill only do that
once to show I can
cos its also about time
I left this poem hanging
like theres some really important (‘s-word,’ she grins)
I dont think Ill tell you yet]
*
Lily’s up next. Her eyes are red. I mean pink, her hair is re
d. She says she’s reading this one cos it reminds her of a chat she and Prester once had in the middle of the night on the banks of the lagoon. Heath was there, she says.
‘Right, Catford?’
‘Right, Camden,’ he says in a low voice from the row behind me.
[then at this point I would probably
stick in a poem I only wrote
because it was my homework
though Im not home and it isnt work
but no one needs to know that yet
and it fills the space and takes the time
so anyway here goes ASSIGNMENT
write a poem in which
you love me nevermore
also you hate me nevermore
thats cos you envy me nevermore
same time you pity me nevermore
mind you you fear me nevermore
you have the hots for me evermore
whoops misprint my bad you have the
hots for me nevermore]
*
I’m up, here I go, my steps resound through all the times I’ve passed through here, I realize I’ve not looked at the poem, my eyes read it as I reach the lectern, my voice catches it as it falls.
[then the next page should be nothing
but space like the man said
because make no mistake its winning
hands down mate
and this blank page would tell a tale
about how the white space one day
smelt someone scared of it
and said aye aye
theres my way in theres my chance
chance to make my mark
and it came in through the window
blanking the dark
and there was no one in the room
the white space swanned about
where is the one hes out is he
suppose Ill just what
kick my shoes off all alone
da dum da dum da dum
cos I miss the one whos scared of me
I do I miss him]
*
Walking back I’m blinking. Everyone’s crazily jagged and aslant in the fresh blur of my eyesight. I wipe that away and they’re in their rows like in some bygone school. I see Heath rising from his seat.
Mimi is cross-legged in her black suede jacket and skirt on the seat next to his. She looks at me calmly, no shrug, no frown, no joke. She’s never looked at me that way but she is now. I turn away defeated, can’t win, too late, you got me.
Heath is last, he does nothing for a while.