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"Shame"

By Ron SlatePosted Tuesday, March 22, 2005, at 11:43 AM ET

after Pessoa

I miss things that meant nothing to me
and so much was nothing.
The world begins returning
like a sailor climbing the hill
to his house, lugging a duffle
bulging with what really happened.

As if the leaves aren't falling
in your mind. As if your memories
aren't like bright leaves falling,
so that the sidewalks are there
only because they are remembered
under the leaves, and things not remembered
are reshaped and unsaved.

I labor to defend myself
against the tedium of the telephone
and its cries of uncaring delight.

These dreams, these visions,
what a vulgar way to be released.
But the squeak of my office chair
is not better, the static of admonition
on the public address system.

My co-worker says, the nice thing
about all this is you can't miss
what you can't remember.
Suppose you had Alzheimer's.
You'd stare at the phone
and it would mean less than nothing.

Shame of the insensate rushed hour.
Immobilized in spurts on the way home,
I miss my knitted sweater,
I miss my grandmother.
Then I climb the hill
with leaves layering the driveway
and the structure of maples candidly clear.

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Ron Slate's latest book of poetry, The Incentive of the Maggot, was published in April 2005. He is the chief operating officer of a biotechnology startup in Massachusetts.

Click here to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.

Please note: Because Slate's backlog of accepted poems is substantial, poetry
editor Robert Pinsky will not be reading new submissions until December 2005.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

"Warm Canto," seems to be written by a very up to date sensibility, in what I would call the new form of scientific realism. The metaphors are clean and simple, lifted off the lawn of nature where the predator dragonfly absorbs the prey mosquito into its body by ingesting it. From there, we move to the predator that is death, and the human who is prey.

This transition happens when the narrator moves into the memory of his friend Les who died.."tired of emotion," wasted and frail in his hospital bed, almost a physical husk, his hand as light as a bird's nest.

The line tired of emotion, I think, is the tenor of this poem. Not only do we think after reading this that Les had died in a state of hopelessness, but that the narrator of this poem has created an 'objective scientific landscape,' one in which predator and prey together, are the being and nothingness of life. The narrator's outlines of his friend Les, are no better than how a death inured attendant in a morgue would view a dead body.

In conclusion of the poem, the narrator draws solace at the death of his friend by waxing philosophical. Just as the mosquito was the shadow of the dragonfly, in effect, prey under its wings..living only to achieve a greater life by becoming part of the body of the dragonfly in death, so too, the human is prey for death in the end.

The dragonfly is the symbol of the narrator's grim reaper, and we in death, grossly physical in the images used by this narrator, give up the body, defiled by dying, into the supreme predator. And, this is just..how it has been and will be.

I found this poem to be an apt portrayal of the biological human's place in the food chain of life. We cannot see our ultimate predator, but have no doubt, it is there. For the narrator, it has taken the form of a dragonfly.

I think the ancient stoics endured much for their philosophy when necessary, but did not strip human life of dignity to justify enduring as an act of denigration. I find this poem sadly lacking in human worth.

--Artemisia

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