You read your Emily Dickenson and I, my Robert Frost

I don't know if poetry will kill me or save me. Sure, it depends on what I read. To feel less akin to a grasshopper's knee, it is suggested that you dissociate yourself from the subject at hand, by engaging in a completely unconnected matter. I could read:


Samson Agonistes
by Ogden Nash

I test my bath before I sit,
And I'm always moved to wonderment
That what chills the finger not a bit
Is so frigid upon the fundament.

See? Nothing. In her eyes you see nothing, no sign of love behind the tears, cried for no one, etc. Thank you, Mr. McCartney.

Or, perhaps, I could read something so rose-tinted that the lines between remote possibility and ridiculous fiction are happily blurred. (For that, of course, I could up my beer intake from three pints to four to achieve an equal if not greater degree of accomplishment. But poetry is more important than beer. Get with the programme.) A symbol of the nauseating unconditional. You know? For instance:

i carry your heart with me
ee cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Or (and this is the first poem I ever learnt by heart):

They say that Hope is Happiness
Lord Byron, George Gordon Noel

They say that hope is happiness;
But genuine Love must prize the past,
And Mem'ry wakes the thoughts that bless:
They rose the first - they set the last;

And all that Mem'ry loves the most
Was once our only Hope to be,
And all that Hope adored and lost
Hath melted into Memory.

Alas! It is delusion all;
The future cheats us from afar,
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are.

Then there is the reluctant weeping acceptance of a fact, combined with the discovery of the perfect poem. As usual, Roger got it right:

You and I
Roger McGough

I explain quietly. You
hear me shouting. You
try a new tack. I
feel old wounds reopen.

You see both sides. I
see your blinkers. I
am placatory. You
sense a new selfishness.

I am a dove. You
recognize the hawk. You
offer an olive branch. I
feel the thorns.

You bleed. I
see crocodile tears. I
withdraw. You
reel from the impact.


There is the poetry of absolute abject disillusionment, my best friend of the present. O, how Auden makes my heart bleed:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone
W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Finally, there is the poignancy of one’s own regrettable ecstasy. It would have been best to be at a loss for happy words, but no, I found them. And will perhaps regret each one forever:

I love you in meetings
Anoopa Anand

I love you in meetings.
Bald air conditioned men
point at large blue screens
and whisper to each other.
It reminds me of all the boardroom light
that never bounces off your head.

I love you on windy days.
Leaves dance in dusty circles,
ripples have baby ripplets,
and clouds run cotton races.
It reminds me of how easily
you could get carried away.

I love you while reading.
Each italic reminds me of you,
leaning tall against a white wall,
smoking a wispy cigarette,
rapidly losing the potential of a fatter font
as the author hastens towards his after words.

I’ll love you tomorrow.
Soon enough you’ll worry
all the hair off your head.
And you know as much as the last guy
how much I enjoy that.
Our shampoos will grow mould together.

I suppose it is impossible to blame poetry for demise or survival of the soul. But for now, it won’t leave me. And I believe I am grateful.