Normandie
He sleeps now, much of the day, less at night,
conserving life, its slight thread thinning out.
His head slumps back in the big plush chair, and
eyes that hurt him close in shallow rest.
The children want to watch TV. I must
distract them, blunt their cheerful noise somehow.
A book is near my hand, filled with sumptuous
paintings of old ships. I open to the page
depicting bronze prows built by war-
minded Rome, and clever upwind sailing
of Spanish merchants, or the knife-sharp lines
of swift tea and opium clippers, the murdering
squat shapes, end-on, of the cold grey battlewagon
fleets of the Great War. Speaking quietly
of these things, I gently open out
the folded center, the book's masterpiece:
a cutaway view, in rich red and black,
of a classic long-hulled liner. I remember
having read this was an unlucky boat,
yet knowing nothing of the particulars, only
indicate, admiringly, its intricate
design. The big chair stirs; the clouded eyes
swing briefly into focus. A voice comes clear:
"I was on that boat the day she sank."
We gape at him. "Yes, I fought ship fires
in New York that year, in a suit, white asbestos,
spaceman-like. The ship, they said, was hit
by saboteurs. We tried to save her, but
she settled sullen in Harbor mud, and was
broken up for scrap." We wait for more,
but he lolls his head again, and the blood-blown
lobe of his brain strikes sleep. I rearrange
fireplace logs to keep the old man warm,
wondering what else I do not know about
this loved and fading flesh that gave us life.
1992
What a sad, wise poem. I love it. Is it new?
ReplyDelete1992, I think ... as the children in the poem are now 22, 25 and 29 (there is also a 42 year old)! Edited a bit for the repost.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, he's in better shape now than when it was written. I took the photo last weekend. He's now 92.
Click on the link in the poem title to see Normandie going down at the docks. It wasn't saboteurs, though -- a welder's sparks fell on some linsed-oiled rags. February 1944, I think. Here she is in her prime.
ReplyDeleteThat is one huge ship! Seeing it go down must have been something.
ReplyDeleteHave you asked your dad recently to describe being there?
Has he read your poem, and what does he think of it? (parents on their poet children...)
Normandie rolled on her side and sank at the wharf in New York harbor. Which was so shallow, it would be like sinking up to your knees. Nothing ever came of efforts to finance a refloat, and she was cut up for the steel a year later. Thus ended one of the most beautiful and romantic transatlantic steamers -- a kind of collateral damage.
ReplyDeleteHe's not into poetry, but has been known to express pride that I am "a writer." Well, now, there are writers and there are writers -- Sharon Astyk and Barbara Kingsolver are writers.
Poetry is especially difficult to pull off (and unremunerative at that). Donald Hall was sucking up to (his words) Dylan Thomas once as a "great poet" and Thomas upbraided him for it: "I've written three good poems in my life. And you know which ones they are." And Hall realized he was right.
I've tried writing poetry too. I have a couple, but nothing I would want to send out into the world... Still, it's a dream one day to write that one book of poems. I know its feel, its theme, just not the words, yet.
ReplyDeleteFor me, once I set poetry as my ambition, the prose simply started pouring out, liberated. I can reserve my perfectionism for poetry.
Most good prose is poetry and vice versa, I tend to think. I've seen laundry lists that made excellent poems.
ReplyDeleteMy own attempts to separate my poems from my prose bits have involved a preference for iambic pentameter, for which I have, or had, a feel. It happens much less often than it did.
I always thought of poetry and prose as very different beasts. A poem packs a different punch, don't know how, it's not the form. It's somehow more concentrated?
ReplyDeleteMany so-called poems read like short pieces of prose to me, but others stand out: yes! that's it!
But what?
I think one should be able to -- not necessarily sing -- but at least chant a poem. Poetry partakes of the "sacred" performance space shared by dance and music and acting. Byron's Don Juan is hardly compressed, but it is poetry, as much so as Levertov's "O taste and see" which is wonderfully compressed. So I think of a lot of things as poetry -- the "Disiderata" is prose but can be read as a poem quite successfully.
ReplyDeleteI have a very specific taste in poems, which is narrative blank verse -- but also a special place in my heart for Plath's Ariel. Or maybe in my throat ? My heart seems to go up into my throat, and I feel a little faint, reading "Herr Lucifer, herr God/I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air."
So much to read and consider! As Thoreau said, "I had no idea so much was going on in Heywood's meadow."
The quote from Ariel makes my hair stand on end.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, Plath was so attentive to the "chant" of poetry - Three Women especially, when you hear her perform it: the cadence is so intense, you seem to forget about the meaning of the words until she gets that punch just right and it brings home the imagery.
Maybe that's what I meant by "concentration": little/big explosions going off in the text.
To write just one poem like that...
But we've moved on to a new post. The photograph is wonderful. That is where you live!