9-Epilogue/Eulogy (cafe/performance)

Epilogue/Eulogy (cafe/performance)
immortalize our love, honor her memory, “passion's grace”

the eternal present of Thomas Browne ~
the remembered love of Monsarrat Leave Cancelled ~
the particular life lived ~

plein air

Come calm my grieving heart

Come calm my grieving heart
It grieves for you
Til it, and all our love,
Are laid to rest.
Again I can not respond

Now
As blocked and hidden memories rise
You emerge again as passion's grace
And I cannot respond
With sorrow that I did not act
Before the ending of our song
For into Death and silence
You have gone






Mary Borden (letter)

I suppose the ‘font’ of ambition is the desire not to be forgotten—I would like to right [sic] poems for you that will make you the subject of thought and dreams, years after we are gone—Abellard and Eloise [sic] have never been forgotten—Dante’s Beatrice is still alive—Why not my lover, who will be remembered for his services to his country, why should he not be known too, because of me?

8-What now? No point! (cemetary)

What now? No point! (cemetary)
despair/saudade, no longer matters she is dead, she never knew the man, nor I the woman, looking for her now, how to clode the circle, could I catch her voice, final rival, she did not know I wrote, old age,

old photo(s)

Come calm my grieving heart

You died with other loves
Unseen by me
And left our love bereft

Would she weep

Would she even remember
That we loved each the other
Long, long ago?

                                                           2007

7-What I did afterwards (city streets)

What I did afterwards (city streets)
a life unspent, never wrote great book, untaken road/opportunities, I forgot to listen to her voice, what if we had met again? Other loves

the mastery of Guilliame du Machaut

page layout
Come calm my grieving heart

You never knew the man that I became
Nor I the woman from that loving girl


page layout

THE POET

poet's commentary & goals

poet's journal

on the act of writing

on the act of production/publication

amplification

annotation

explication

justification

rhetorical gloss

[showing off]

simplification

rubrics

summaries

translations

paraphrases

references

citations

THE ONE SPOKEN TO

her responses in letter form

reality/outside world

approbation

correction

parody

THE POETIC WORK

prosimetra/haibun

prose

poetry

dialog

illustrations

[drawings]

QUOTES

few key quotations

EDITOR

evaluation

exhortation

organization

appearance

TYPOGRAPHY

normal

bold

italic

underline

small caps

boxed

(must work in blak/white)

6-What if it had worked (railway station)

What if it had worked (railway station)
What would life have been like? Our love different from others', what might I have done, no time make memories of daily life, she saw me as I wanted to be

the pastoral narrative of John Clare/Edward Thomas

iluustration

Her words

Christopher please tell me you love me,
tell me it again and again and again
Chris be near me,
and cherish me as if I were a child
as when I lied in your arms
and felt so young so young,
and pure so really pure.
Tell me I'm yours, and repeat me
you'll never let me go away . . . .

                                                           1964

5-What I should have done (bookshop)

What I should have done (bookshop)
We had no chance no time, was I faint of heart? Too romantic did not fight no more letters, did not plan campaign, she loved the letter writer

the directness of Sextus Propertius
the peasant vitality/visuality of Jacob Grimmer

computer

ballad

Would she weep

Would she cry
For the erect stance
Of youth not yet
Burdened with regret?

Iphis (Euripides)

Why aren't poor mortals ever allowed this,
to run life's course again, its youth and age?
As in our home, if something goes awry
we have a second chance, can rectify it.
But not so in our lives. Now just suppose
we could relive it all – twice young, twice old --
if we made some hideous blunder, we could fix it.

          The Suppliant Women by Euripides

4-What really happened (jetty/restaurant)

What really happened (jetty/restaurant)

The typography of Ben Jonson's masques
the gentle internal colloquies of Belloc in the Four Men
the spirituality of japanese/Chinese diaries/nikki

notebooks

dialogue

four men – poet, actor, worker, young man

Come calm my grieving heart

You went away
Or did I let you go?


Again I can not respond

Later
You in your far-off country
Me, my darkened room,
I let you decide our fate and doom
And heed "Forget your English boy,
Kill the light that you once shone
Into his heart"



Would she weep

Would she chide
My disturbance of
Her final rest?

3-Memories (gardens/beach)

Memories (gardens/beach)
joy of loving, of being loved, tell me you love me, remember this, was it as real for her, no detail memories of last “perfect” time, her memories

the surprised grief of Thomas Hardy
the love ideas of HG Wells Anatomy of Frustration
pens
letters/man who wrote letters

Come calm my grieving heart

You filled my heart with wonder
You gave me love

Again I can not respond

Then
When the day-sun was warm
And the night-star bright
And we lay together in the night
I never asked what worried you
Or why, but thought that I could calm
Your mind with just my hands
Her words

I love you Christopher,
remember this
when you doubt me,
when you have fear,
when you think this separation is unbearable,
when you don't understand anymore.

Drukpa Kunley

'The virgin finds pleasure in her rising desire,
The young tiger finds pleasure in his consummation,
The old man finds pleasure in his fertile memory:
           Drukpa Kunley’s “Sutra of Sex” (redux)
           Translation from Bhutanese by Keith Dowman and Sonam Paljor

2-Black Heralds (cafe)

Black Heralds (cafe)
rejection? Loss of passion? Memory fails? No end if life talk, did she remember me, loved love, your own god, why forgot for so long, no more tomorrows, burned letters, fixing memories, Dante never forgot

the passion/obsession of Paul Potts
the dialogue of separateness of Sceve and du Guillet

lists

Come calm my grieving heart

Come calm my grieving heart
It grieves for you
Would she weep

Would she weep
As I weep
At my stooped
And staggered gait?
??? You did not talk to me

You did not talk to me from the grave
As you promised
Your best barbs you said you would save
Until you were deceased.
You grinned - I smiled, a little decreased.

1-Duetto – Prologue (cafe)

Duetto – Prologue (cafe)

The multi-structure of prosimetra/nikki

And then he began to write

Then one day he began to write on index-cards, in notebooks, on scraps and in his head - but mostly in his head, reluctant to let go of the words, to give away the only thing(s) he had left of himself, of her, and her, and her, to send out and seek the escaped dreams of the younger man.

When I was a boy I made lists. Many, many lists - of this and that, as a game, as an end to itself. Now as an old man I make lists of poems, articles, stories that maybe I will never write but need to write to understand who I am.









001 - I saw you the other day

I saw you the other day. You came into the coffee house. I was seated at a table in a corner. You did not see me. I saw your smile. Although I am now an elderly man, you have not changed from the beautiful young woman who walked away. So many years ago.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter
Each look back
Love, Joy, Regret Despair
Now just your smile
 002 - If I follow you

If I follow you through the door will I walk back into the lost past? Will I be able to tear up my speeches and actions to live a second life - written by me rather than by circumstances? Or is this cafe too comfortable?

I will tear up this sad sonnet that I have begun . .

During the loneliest hour of the dark night,
When time stands still and my memory fails,
I lose my life . . . . .

The instant of composition keeps the memory alive, raw. He will walk forward, with pain and difficulty, into the past and make it cohere. The church spire is a needle to his pole.
           Memory Maps: 'The Edge of the Orison: In the Traces of John Clare's 'Journey Out of Essex'' by Iain Sinclair http://www.vam.ac.uk/

she talks to him and he talks to himself. Like two soliloquists just within earshot of one another they seem sometimes to fall into dialogue and at others to be taking part in completely different dramas.
                       Written out of Revenge - Rosemary Hill- LRB

0-Epigraphs

The instant of composition keeps the memory alive, raw. He will walk forward, with pain and difficulty, into the past and make it cohere. The church spire is a needle to his pole.
           Memory Maps: 'The Edge of the Orison: In the Traces of John Clare's
          'Journey Out of Essex'' by Iain Sinclair http://www.vam.ac.uk/


she talks to him and he talks to himself. Like two soliloquists just within earshot of one another they seem sometimes to fall into dialogue and at others to be taking part in completely different dramas.
                       Written out of Revenge - Rosemary Hill- LRB Love’s Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen & Charles Ritchie Letters and Diaries 1941-73 edited by Victoria Glendinning, with Judith Robertson


'The virgin finds pleasure in her rising desire,
The young tiger finds pleasure in his consummation,
The old man finds pleasure in his fertile memory:
           Drukpa Kunley’s “Sutra of Sex” (redux)
           Translation from Bhutanese by Keith Dowman and Sonam Paljor



I suppose the ‘font’ of ambition is the desire not to be forgotten—I would like to right [sic] poems for you that will make you the subject of thought and dreams, years after we are gone—Abellard and Eloise [sic] have never been forgotten—Dante’s Beatrice is still alive—Why not my lover, who will be remembered for his services to his country, why should he not be known too, because of me?
           Mary Borden (letter)



"Time wakens a longing more poignant than all the longings caused by the division of lovers in space, for there is no road back into its country.  Our bodies were not made for that journey; only the imagination can venture upon it; and the setting out, the road, and the arrival:  all is imagination."

Edwin Muir, An Autobiography (The Hogarth Press 1954), page 224.




 “What I said before about you & me perhaps is what really applies: we met on top of a mountain & should leave it at that”. For all his newspaper-reading, pub-going, and hymning of the ordinary life, a significant part of MacNeice remained in residence on that mountain top, and it was on its difficult heights that he was able to reveal himself more fully and humanly than ever before or afterwards. Jonathan Allison, editor LETTERS OF LOUIS MACNEICE


Memory
Is Memory most of miseries miserable,
Or the one flower of ease in bitterest hell?
Dante Gabriel Rossetti,