The Abyss

[This was my entry for this year's Passage Prize. Didn't get short listed this time, which either means my poetry is getting worse, or the competition is getting better, or both. The good news is that you now get the poem for free. The bad news is you get what you pay for.]

The Abyss

“I inform you, great king, I announce to you, great king: aging and death are rolling in on you. When aging and death are rolling in on you, great king, what should be done?”

“As aging and death are rolling in on me, venerable sir, what else should be done but to live by the Dhamma, to live righteously, and to do wholesome and meritorious deeds?”

Death, like the sun, cannot be stared at too long.

But death, also like the sun, cannot be avoided entirely,

Without ending up withered and emaciated inside.

The stunted, rickets-plagued character that results

From staying indoors, never facing the world as it is,

Subsisting on a diet of saccharine fairy tales,

Manufactured junk-food doom-scrolling distractions,

And the slippery, seed oils

Of the present-tense, oleaginous outrage-of-the-day.



Like the Strange Blind Idiot God of Evolution,

Creeping and slow, without an agreed upon plan,

Society has assumed the role of Suddhodana.

The old man and the sick man still serve some useful purpose.

The former as an important marketing demographic,

At least until his 401K dwindles,

Whereupon he gets shunted to Death’s Waiting Room in Florida

Where it’s always 75F, and the phone only rings on Thanksgiving.

The sick man is valuable, at least in the abstract,

For highlighting the importance of “dem programs”.

But the corpse, young Siddhartha,

That simply will not do.

It is for your own good, you see.

(The monk, of course, barely even exists,

So needs no concealment.)



Reader, having officially reached middle age,

I can only remember seeing a corpse once.

At a distance, on Santa Monica Beach,

A hobo having expired somehow,

Lying supine on a bed of concrete,

The lifeguard urgently performing CPR,

But the paramedics from the ambulance,

Ambling without urgency.

They knew.

Meanwhile, the hero of the play, with only the best of intentions,

Kept the show going, lest the tourists get alarmed.

He shall be taken to the hospital.

Yes, the hospital. That’s where ambulances go.



If you escape misfortune, your first introduction

Into the Society of Those With Open Eyes

Will be when your own parents die.

The happier your life is,

The later will you learn its most important lesson.

And standing over their grave,

You shall face Siddhartha’s choice.

The heavy oak door swings open a crack,

Revealing a strange light,

And murmurings that beckon from outside the palace.

Shall you walk out into the night?

Or stay in the bedchamber?

How few, how mad with truth,

Those who follow in his footsteps.



It is a trick, of course.

Everyone resolves to leave.

They even walk a few hesitating paces.

A few hours later,

Nearly all of them go back.



But modernity, like Suddhodana,

Never entirely succeeds in tossing out nature with its pitchfork.

There is a crack through which light occasionally seeps in,

When the sun is aligned just right,

The Stonehenge gap in the Machinery of Moloch,

An ancient monkey-brain relic that can’t quite be erased.



As the tarmac rises up to meet your meandering plane,

And the engines whine with a different tenor,

A chance cross-breeze lifts you up,

And for one terrible, glorious second,

As the primordial panic knots your stomach,

You are aware, acutely, incisively,

That you will die.

Not just eventually.

But maybe right now.

The moment, like death itself, is shared with no one,

No matter how close by.

But everybody knows.

And what you think, right then,

Has a clarity of vision,

Both sublime and prosaic.



(It would be very sad if my daughter grows up without a father.)

(Christ, I still haven’t gotten the life insurance sorted. That’s incredibly stupid.)

* In breath, out breath *

(I wish I’d called my parents more.)

* In breath, out breath *

(If this is it, I am happy that, broadly, I have done my duty.)


*Thud!*


The wheels touch down.

The engines roar into reverse.

The world returns.

America, December 31st, 2021

[Editorial Note: I wanted to risk trying something unusual for this blog. This poem was written as my submission for Lomez's excellent Passage Prize, which I ordered, and you should too. It made the short list for the finals (yay!), but not the final prizes (boo!), nor the second round selections for the print edition (double boo!). So you might describe this as being among the worst of the worst of the best, which sounds about right to me.

The following was my introduction to the submission, which I'm not sure if I should get straight to the point and delete, but while I am a confident essayist, I am a nervous poet, so forgive the endless self-effacement:

"Hey Curtis,

Let me begin with an apology of sorts - it has been twenty years since I last wrote a poem, and I never really understood free verse. I kind of think of poetry as divided into either a) regular forms with rhyme and meter, or b) unusually personal imagery-heavy essays broken up to look visually appealing and emphasize certain pauses. I don't know if the latter is your view of free verse, however. To write the following in regular poetic form is probably outside my skill level, would take a very long time and probably would end up worse. Hence the result below. When you describe the meter of your poems, it mostly doesn't register with me, as I just breeze past this and read the sentences, which I really like. All of which is to say – I’m not sure whether this should be a poem at all, or an essay. But it doesn't seem to fit the prompt for the literary non-fiction version. So I figured I'd submit it anyway, if for no other reason than that I very much enjoyed the writing prompt to write something personal that risked being cringe." ]


America, December 31st, 2021

America, that land

That drew me in so long ago,

Is caught, pincer-like,

Between the two great forces

Of decaying empires.

The Scylla,

Of the great deal of ruin in a nation,

And the Charybdis,

That that which cannot continue, will cease.

 

I remember, when I first arrived,

Having occasion to observe,

With some regularity,

That this was a great country.

At billboards advertising

"Twenty Chicken McNuggets for $6.99".

Partly in jest, but mostly serious,

I used to remark:

"These should have the national anthem

Blaring on repeat,

Flag flying in the breeze.

This country believes in value!".

At redneck engineering videos,

Of homemade trebuchets.

At old universities,

Taking classes for free,

With famous and brilliant professors.

At the wonder that every band I loved,

Would just turn up in my town,

And play live every year or so.

At college girls that would find

My accent just cute enough,

For that 5-10% boost,

To come back to my apartment.

 

America, you have been very good to me.

 

I had one such moment recently,

At seeing the winning entries,

In a giant pumpkin contest,

At a small-town country fair.

A two-thousand-pound pumpkin!

Grown simply for the je ne sais quois!

There is still greatness,

Wonder and weirdness,

In odd corners you can stumble on.

But the next thought I had

Was realizing

Just how many years it was

Since last I had that thought.

Partly, the desensitization

Of repeated exposure.

Partly, the ingrate foreigner,

Now successful and dismissive,

Of those that helped him.

But partly, I think,

The decline that is all around us.

 

I used to joke that America

Seemed to be experiencing

The Soviet time-line in reverse,

Except it was crumbling, not strengthening.

Then some mental reflex noted

The multiplying number of epicycles,

And I wondered how sure I was,

That things didn't better match,

To the Roman empire,

Or the Roman republic,

Or the French revolution,

Or the Byzantines,

Or to many others

Of which I knew less.

(The amateur historian,

Confident in his theory,

Would do well to count

How many Chinese dynasties

He can name at all,

Then exclude those where

The mental association maps

Only to a diad,

With a name, and a phrase

Like "vase" or "pottery army".)

The confusing pattern-matching,

Where every peg is a meteorite,

Fractally weird and irregular,

And endlessly able to be rotated,

And every hole is an impact crater,

Blasted into the earth,

Chaos where a neat outline should be.

Beware the advice

Of the reactionary

Who only knows one history

Of decline and fall.

 

Decline, in one form or another,

Is on the lips of almost

Everyone these days.

A Democrat-voting work friend

Asks me if I plan

To home-school my children,

With "Yes" his obvious answer.

I responded that,

I had thought about this, and

Concluded that if there

Is not a nearby school,

Either public or private,

That I would trust to

Educate my child,

Is this actually still

The country I should be living in?

 

The answer, unspoken, lingers in the air.

 

The obvious follow-on question,

Also unspoken, is:

"If not here, then where?"

This one has no easy answer,

As everywhere turns into America.

 

But we have sailed

Very close to Charybdis,

And fail to tack towards

Scylla at our peril.

Is it really about to collapse?

Or is this just

The Twitter talking?

The outrage-bait machine,

Using my brain as

A meat puppet?

The glowing square is

Hypnotic and smooth,

And out of it pours

Misery and anxiety.

The view out my window

Is the same as ever.

 

The conditional is easy to tell.

Fussell understood it well,

Describing the prospect of death

For a soldier in wartime.

If the porridge hits the propeller:

"It is going to happen to me,

And only my not being here

Will prevent it."

This realization,

Fussell thought,

Was what drove them mad.

 

As a foreigner, I can tell you,

Woodrow Wilson was right

About us hyphenated-Americans

(For the first generation at least).

The man who would leave

His wife for a mistress,

Will abandon her, too, in turn,

When the deal's gone sour.

When it is your country,

You will fight.

When you are a stranger,

You will leave.

That is, if you can

Figure it out in time.

 

One day, just like

Niall Ferguson's bond investors,

On the eve of WW1,

You may wake up and find out

That the great deal

Of ruin in a nation

Has finally been exhausted.

 

It is not going to happen, probably,

This week, month, or year, though.

The mean decline is still slow.

The variance is alarming.

 

The young man who once left

His home, carelessly,

Not even really sure

Quite what the plan was,

Finds this an overwhelming question

Now in middle age.

 

So what to do in the meantime?

If now is not, in fact, the right time?

 

Relative to the Soviets,

Our mangled and mismatched metaphor,

We have one great advantage.

We also have an NKVD,

But no one is in charge of it.

Its ad hoc structure gives

Only loose coordination,

And since the only payoff comes

In the debased coin of status,

Our own era's commissars

Simply cannot wait

To announce themselves publicly.

"In this house we believe..."

Solzhenitsyn would have dreamed

Of foes this blatant.

 

I suspect that as things get

Inexorably worse,

The skill that soon,

Will matter most

Is knowing whom to trust,

And whom you can

Speak freely to.

 

I have found just two

Rules of thumb worth relaying.

If you have a

Sense of humor,

And if you can

Debate a point

And not take it personally,

I can likely talk about

Almost anything with you,

If I choose my words correctly.

At least today.

Maybe one day,

The backwards-winding clock

Will strike 1937,

And then everyone will be,

Guilty of something.

 

Wish as we might,

We cannot live

In any era but our own.

One must always try

To avoid the uselessness

And self-pity in

"The whining, the pleas of a coward".

 

So, what can you do with all this?

 

Propaganda succeeds, in part,

When those who disagree with it,

Are afraid to say so.

 

Dissenting openly and publicly,

Especially in the written word,

Is courting great trouble.

It is for the bold,

If you have a heart and spirit,

As firm as Solzhenitsyn,

An old testament prophet,

In this post testament world.

 

But speaking up in private,

To those you can trust,

Builds camaraderie and friendship,

The basis of all bonds that form

Incipient organizations,

Upon which revival may depend.

 

Perhaps this adds

Small brick on brick,

To the start of something new,

The Empire that grows,

From the ashes of the Republic.

 

Perhaps it serves only,

As the intellectual companionship,

Of knowing one is not alone,

In these dispirited times.

That the Soviet mental asylum,

We dissidents are placed in,

Is actually filled with the sane.

 

I may not live boldly

In many things,

But I believe in backing one's judgment

In estimations of character.

Learn how to read people,

Judiciously and carefully,

To figure out whom you can trust.

 

But to let them know

That they can trust you,

To break the higher order uncertainty,

Someone generally has to have

The courage to say something

Out of sync with modernity.

 

Might you get it wrong?

Of course you might get it wrong!

I have got it badly wrong

Exactly three times, so far.

None were fatal, thankfully.

Did you really think that there

Was some option, in this morass,

That didn't come with risk?

 

Reader, you would go

A fair way towards

Being conditionally trusted,

Knowing not much more

Than that you stumbled across this poem. 

The best poem title ever

Making this a double dose of Hal G.P. Colebatch, if there has been a better poem title than:

'Observing a thong-shod pedestrian's reaction to catching his toe in the ring of a discarded condom'

I certainly haven't come across it.

Shining, flickering into that good night

From 30,000 feet in the air, the early evening displays a curious inversion of light. The ground beneath me is a dark purplish grey. I sometimes strain my eyes to try to make out any possible distinct shapes, but the earth does not divulge its secrets. If not for my trust in where the plane is taking me, it would be difficult to tell if I were even above ground or water. But the sky is still clinging to light, as the plane chases the dying embers of the sunset all the way towards the Pacific. The cloud bank that hugs the horizon is rimmed in a thin atmosphere of orange, which slowly leaks to pale blue, then dark blue, then black. Jupiter beckons above.

And then, every so often, the inky  void below is disturbed. A tiny defiant outpost of light appears, absurdly huddled against the black satin all around. Like some strange lichen pattern, a few lines can be made out against the indistinct mass of faint illumination. The edges are fuzzy, and a few single points of light have ventured out further, like scouts into the unknown.

Not yet, the lights call out. The universe may not care whether we are snuffed out or not. But for today, here lives Man. Today, generations rise and fall, struggling to subdue this rock of ours. But our children’s children may one day conquer the stars.

"It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

The Ladder of Saint Augustine

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

All common things, each day's events,
That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend.

The low desire, the base design,
That makes another's virtues less;
The revel of the ruddy wine,
And all occasions of excess;

The longing for ignoble things;
The strife for triumph more than truth;
The hardening of the heart, that brings
Irreverence for the dreams of youth;

All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,
That have their root in thoughts of ill;
Whatever hinders or impedes
The action of the nobler will;--

All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright fields of fair renown
The right of eminent domain.

We have not wings, we cannot soar;
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.

The mighty pyramids of stone
That wedge-like cleave the desert airs,
When nearer seen, and better known,
Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

The distant mountains, that uprear
Their solid bastions to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear
As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

Standing on what too long we bore
With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,
We may discern--unseen before--
A path to higher destinies.

Nor deem the irrevocable Past,
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.

Lepanto

Apropos nothing, the great G. K. Chesterton, on Don John of Austria at the Battle of Lepanto:

Lepanto

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that, is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

(via John Derbyshire)

Update: If you want to hear a really awesome reading of the second stanza, listen to the last 1:30 of the broadcast here. Trust me, I've never heard a poetry reading anywhere near this radical.

Despite and Still

Apropos nothing, the great Robert Graves:

Despite and Still

Have you not read
The words in my head,
And I made part
Of your own heart?
We have been such as draw
The losing straw --
You of your gentleness,
I of my rashness,
Both of despair --
Yet still might share
This happy will:
To love despite and still.
Never let us deny
The thing's necessity,
But, O, refuse
To choose,
Where chance may seem to give
Love in alternative.

Samuel Menashe on Mortality

Pity us
Beside the sea
On the sands
So briefly

According to the obituary for him in The Economist, he wrote this poem on the sands of an Irish beach, where the tide would wash it away.

Not a single word is wasted in this poem. The tribute due to such a work is quiet contemplation - one ought to always be hesitant to offer commentary longer than the poem itself.