I’m afraid Christmas stress brings out the cynic in all of us.
WHAT COUNTS
As December days grow darker
and presents remain unsought,
it’s plainer every day what counts
is the cost and not the thought.
My Second Christmas Poem
FIRST OF FOUR CHRISTMAS POEMS
DO YOU HAVE SOME TIME?
I couldn’t choose because I didn’t know
what I was looking for. The store was full
of things I didn’t want but guessed would do.
A clerk chirped, “Everything’s exchangeable.”
What I was looking for but couldn’t find
was how to get inside of my wife’s mind
and see what she would see in all this stuff,
but I no longer knew her well enough.
Musing over perfumes, sweaters, rings—
all kinds of things—I heard again the word
“exchangeable.” Not “everything,” I thought.
Once time is spent, we’re stuck with what we’ve bought.
I borrow time from what I’d like to do
to do what must be done to pay our debts,
and when they’re paid, what then? It’s time for bed.
I lie awake reviewing my regrets.
Oh, we could live on less, no doubt of that,
but less to live on doesn’t mean less work.
The life we dreamed of living in our youth
takes cash as well as leisure, love, and truth.
I’d like to buy some time to show her how
I can mean more to her than I do now
but guess I’ll go with . . . this. And in a flash,
my perky clerk is chirping, “Charge or cash?”
Poetry and Music
Poetry’s Future
I was surprised when Bob Dylan got the Nobel Prize for literature, So was he. But after I thought it over, it made sense. Few people read literary poetry anymore. In fact few people read literary anything anymore, so why give prizes for writing stuff few people read?
In the last century, the professors persuaded us that literary poems and novels were incomprehensible without their help. But who wants to read a poem or a book with a professor looking over his shoulder? People blame technology for the decline in our reading skills (80% of US families did not read a book last year), but long before computers our teachers drained all the fun out of reading. Remember “Run, Spot, run. See Spot run”? Has anyone ever cared if Spot ran or not?
If poetry has a future, it lies in the revival of its ancient partnership with music.
Music and poetry went together like a horse and carriage before the invention of the printed book. Maybe the internet, which is causing a realignment of our ways of communicating that is every bit as revolutionary as the printing press, will revive the alliance of poetry and music. Maybe in the future, poets will need to read music and play an instrument.
Technology has made available not just the songs of today but those of yesterday and the day before yesterday. Maybe this will promote a greater historical consciousness. (“I’m just a cockeyed optimist.”) I think music does this better than just words on a page. Maybe those who look back nostalgically at Gimme Some Lovin’ will come to appreciate the nostalgia of us antediluvians who look back nostalgically at Tea for Two and Make Someone Happy, especially the latter.
Make someone happy,
Make just one someone happy.
Make just one heart the heart you sing to.
One smile that cheers you,
One face that lights when it nears you.
One gal you’re everything to.
Fame, if you win it,
Comes and goes in a minute.
Where’s the real stuff in life to cling to?
Love is the answer,
Someone to love is the answer.
Once you’ve found her,
Build your world around her.
Make someone happy.
Make just one someone happy
And you will be happy too.
Lyrics by Betty Comdon and Adolph Green, music by Jule Styne
The Persistence of Flowers in a World Gone Mad
One day when we still lived in Manhattan, we walked to Riverside Park at 89th and came upon this flower at the foot of the steps leading up to a brownstone. A dandelion wouldn’t have been surprising but a real flower. I said it was a violet. Mary said no, something else. I’m sure she’s right, but we couldn’t decide what it was.So until further notice, I’m sticking to violet.
To pluck it is a pity,
To leave it is a pity
Ah, the violet!
Naojo (Trans. R.H. Blyth) in Haiku, Vol.2, Spring (Hokuseido Press 1950) p. 380
That was in Japan. In England, Tennyson found flower (violet, whatever) in a crannied wall and, without hesitation, plucked it out, root and all, convinced that if he could understand it, he would “know what God and man is.”
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
But he couldn’t understand it. Earlier in century, the less inquisitive Wordsworth found a flower (Definitely a violet this time.) “by a mossy stone, / Half hidden from the eye” and left it alone. It reminded him of his mysterious Lucy whom
There were none to praise
And very few to love.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
The next time we walked to the park, the flower (violet?) was still there—half hidden from the eye.
Paintings and Poems 