Liam Rector...
...a poet, has died. Here's a nice one of his poems.
UD doesn't find the first half of this poem all that entrancing, actually, but the thing concludes beautifully.
Now
Now I see it: a few years To play around while being Bossed around
By the taller ones, the ones With the money And more muscle, however
Tender or indifferent They might be at being Parents; then off to school
And the years of struggle With authority while learning Violent gobs of things one didn't
Want to know, with a few tender And tough teachers thrown in Who taught what one wanted
And needed to know; then time To go out and make one's own Money (on the day or in
The night-shift), playing around A little longer ("Seed-time," "Salad days") with some
Young "discretionary income" Before procreation (which Brings one quickly, too quickly,
Into play with some variation Of settling down); then, Most often for most, the despised
Job (though some work their way Around this with work of real Delight, life's work, with the deepest
Pleasures of mastery); then years Spent, forgotten, in the middle decades Of repair, creation, money
Gathered and spent making the family Happen, as one's own children busily Work their way into and through
The cycle themselves, Comic and tragic to see, with some Fine moments playing with them;
Then, through no inherent virtue Of one's own, but only because The oldest ones are busy falling
Off the edge of the planet, The years of governing, Of being the dreaded authority
One's self; then the recognition (Often requiring a stiff drink) that it Will all soon be ending for one's self,
But not before Alzheimer's comes For some, as Alzheimer's comes For my father-in-law now (who
Has forgotten not only who Shakespeare is but that he taught Shakespeare for thirty years,
And who sings and dances amidst The forgotten in the place To which he's been taken); then
An ever-deepening sense of time And how the end might really happen, To really submit, bend, and go
(Raging against that night is really An adolescent's idiot game). Time soon to take my place
In the long line of my ancestors (Whose names I mostly never knew Or have recently forgotten)
Who took their place, spirit poised In mature humility (or as jackasses Braying against the inevitable)
Before me, having been moved By time through time, having done The time and their times.
A place for repose and laughter In the consoling beds of being tender, I tell them now, my son, my daughter.
"Nearer my god to thee" I sing On the deck of my personal Titanic, An agnostic vessel in the mind.
Born alone, die alone—and sad, though Vastly accompanied, to see The sadness in the loved ones
To be left behind, and one more Moment of wondering what, If anything, comes next. . .
Never to have been completely Certain what I was doing Alive, but having stayed aloft
Amidst an almost sinister doubt. I say to my children Don't be afraid, be buoyed
—In its void the world is always Falling apart, entropy its law —I tell them those who build
And master are the ones invariably Merry: Give and take quarter, Create good meals within the slaughter,
A place for repose and laughter In the consoling beds of being tender, I tell them now, my son, my daughter.
(From The Executive Director of the Fallen World.)
UD only really cottons to this when Rector finds himself a good metaphor and extends it, meaning that although she likes the concise history of one's life that takes up most of the poem, she really likes this:
A place for repose and laughter In the consoling beds of being tender, I tell them now, my son, my daughter.
"Nearer my god to thee" I sing On the deck of my personal Titanic, An agnostic vessel in the mind.
Born alone, die alone—and sad, though Vastly accompanied, to see The sadness in the loved ones
To be left behind, and one more Moment of wondering what, If anything, comes next. . .
Never to have been completely Certain what I was doing Alive, but having stayed aloft
Amidst an almost sinister doubt. I say to my children Don't be afraid, be buoyed
—In its void the world is always Falling apart, entropy its law —I tell them those who build
And master are the ones invariably Merry: Give and take quarter, Create good meals within the slaughter,
A place for repose and laughter In the consoling beds of being tender, I tell them now, my son, my daughter.
He only gets seriously poetic at the end; not merely with the lovely reiterated "consoling beds of being tender" image, but with serious end-rhyme, or almost-rhyme, and serious rhythmic lulling... And of course UD notes yet again the theme of a father telling his children to be buoyed, to be brave. "Create good meals within the slaughter" sounds as though it comes right out of Stevenson's Aes Triplex.
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