Heart full, I open a fat book of poems – at random – a thousand-page anthology from my college days – of poems in English thought “Modern” circa 1970. Its pages weep remembering – the boy I was – dreaming of wriggling my way into that rank. Why did the dream of poetry tug me so? I knew no poets then. Except for Shakespeare and doggerel, I’d hardly met a poem. The suburbs of my rearing was the least “poetic” landscape imaginable. Yet I longed for the luxuriousness of orderly lines, so much more certain and consoling than the sprawl of paragraphs. Poets’ visions floated above the ordeal of actuality, making music of muck. Somehow I sensed, age 18, actuality would be muck, but if I could make music of it…!
These days, I consult poem books as the old Romans did their Vergil for prophetic guidance. In the Sortes Vergilianae, solemn souls, having purified themselves, opened their Aeneid at random, and interpreted whatever passage they happened on as a metaphoric response to the question they had on their mind. (Bibliomancy, this is called – lovely word.) So I, in doubt, trust in poems to straighten me out. The world of the headlines appalls; crudeness and cruelty prevail; calamity creeps closer. The poem hangs above that ugliness like a fluffy cloud over a battlefield. Decoding it calms.
Today’s was by a poet I’d never heard of – W.W. Gibson – have you? How good could he be if I didn’t know him? We assume posterity’s verdict just, though it isn’t always.
I read – and read again – and again. I typed it out.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedSight
By W.W. Gibson (1878-1962)
By the lamplit stall I loitered, feasting my eyesOn colors ripe and rich for the heart’s desire – Tomatoes, redder than Krakatoa’s fire,Oranges like old sunsets over Tyre,And apples golden-green as the glades of Paradise.
And as I lingered, lost in divine delight,My heart thanked God for the goodly gift of sightAnd all youth’s lively senses keen and quick…When suddenly, behind me in the night,I heard the tapping of a blind man’s stick.
Charming, no? Better than that. Its music melodic, its moral urgent, so pertly packed, like a precisely wrapped gift.
The simplest of scenes. The poet, on an evening stroll, pauses to admire the rainbow of a produce stall. “Stalled” in a double sense, he’s in a happy mood – his eyes “feast… on colors ripe and rich for the heart’s desire.” He sounds a young romantic, brimming with love, his mind globetrotting to Krakatoa and ancient Tyre – and Paradise! – for adequate analogies.
He’s so glad he erupts into spontaneous prayer, thanking God for his senses, his sight especially. How lucky he is – and we are – to be alive! The tapping of a stick wrenches him from his reverie. A blind man, yikes. Not all are as blessed. Life is hard – and will be hard – not dependably “divine delight.”
A major masterwork? No. A tad too pat. Even so a sweet, sound, vivid instant of revelation. Yes, we should rejoice in the world’s bright colors, we should revel in its distances (Krakatoa) and history (Tyre) and visions (Paradise). But we should not forget the grim headlines, life’s cruelty and injustice, the blind man with his stick.
I seek out poems we can share, to divert us, for a precious moment, from the horror of our hour, so we can return to the fray with refurbished souls. Music and muck will always coexist – and we must forget neither.
All Wiki has to tell me about Gibson’s reputation is that it was “eclipsed” by the T.S. Eliot/Pound school of modernism. He deserves better.