(no subject)

[wickedflea]

I should read more poetry. I should read more period, but I'm particularly bad about poetry. I really do enjoy it when I sit down and invest the time (and it really doesn't take much time), but I'm just not in the habit of reading poetry. In my last semester in grad school I took a class on form and theory of poetry, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well, I probably shouldn't say thoroughly, because we went into a lot of far-out criticism that for me bore no relation to the actual works, but we did have some good discussions and I did get into a couple of poets by virtue of that class. One was Philip Larkin, who we didn't even discuss until I brought him up. I needed a modern poet to do a paper and presentation on, and I thought, "Holy shit--who's a modern poet I know anything about? Nobody! OK, Captain Beefheart says that Larkin is good; let me check him out." And sure enough, I ended up digging him. Here's one of the poems I wrote a lot about in my paper. It goes a long way toward summing up my feelings about religion. I'm not religious, but still--there's a certain something when you step into an old cathedral, particularly an empty one.

Church Going

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the hole end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence;
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new–
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern. I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
"Here endeth" much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for, wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief is gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equable what since is found
Only in separation--marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these--for which was built
This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

1954 1955

Comments

[carocrow.livejournal.com]

I have a great love for ee cummings, myself. Big poetry reader/writer. I think it is the soul of music, anyway.

[lunchboxface.livejournal.com]

That's a really good poem, thanks for sharing. I've never heard of Larkin before. It's hard for me to fathom those with an intense love for the art of poetry; other forms of artistic expression, like visual art and music, seem so much more vivid and well, expressive. But I guess there's something to be said for poetry. I don't read enough either, but I do devote a lot of time to understanding difficult music so I guess I can use that as my feeble excuse.