“I met a traveler from an antique land who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, the hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.” [Percy Bysshe Shelley]
Comment: Not my poem – I only wish it was – but certainly it expresses some of my sentiments at the current time. What on earth is happening? Who do we think we are? What do we think we’re doing? Where do we think we are going? ‘Vanity of vanities – all is vanity.’
We all have them somewhere, we few, we few, we privileged few, sent away to boarding school before we even knew what was tucked away in old school trunks, or locked away, cobweb-covered, in the dark recesses of parental minds.
This is my ‘back-to-school’ list. It contains everything a young boy needs, or can think of, when leaving home: shoes, shoe polish, many brushes for shoes, hair, clothes, teeth… everything: name tags, shirts, socks, underpants, trousers, jerseys, ties (of a quiet color), sheets, pillow cases, hankies, sports shirts (house and school), pen, pencils, ink, blotting paper.
So many memories spring out from this list, so many skeletons shake their fists, or wag a finger, or wave, hello, farewell, from that old trunk.
Look: the safety razor to shave that first hint of hair on a juvenile face. Bible and prayer book, too, though I never used them.
Chalk on a blackboard. Black, red, blue, green markers on a white board.
Here comes the eraser. The board is wiped clean, or almost clean, figures, letters, blurred, just about ready for the next class. This happens again and again.
What remains? Notes in a student’s book? Memories of a lesson in tedious boredom, the teacher droning on and on.
“Knowledge: that which passes from my notes to your notes, without going through anyone’s head.”
Yesterday’s lessons: dry dust of a doctoral thesis.
Revisionism: “What color is the blackboard?” “Last year, it was green, but this year, the blackboard is white.”
What do we really see when we look in the mirror? Do we see our real selves or do we see the sad distortions of our diminishment?
The Fairground on the Recreation Field in Swansea used to have a hall of mirrors. You handed over your three-penny bit, not the silver one your granny gave you so you would have good luck always, then you walk up the wooden stair, and there you are, staring at yourself.
Fatter, thinner, shorter, taller, a half-and-half version, thinner at the top and so much fatter at the bottom, like those old Christmas figures you could flick, but never roll over. Giggle city: and hysterics ruled.
Or did they? So sad to think that, back then, I saw myself as I am now: forehead larger, fatter one end, thinner at the other with shriveled shanks, wasted muscles.
And the Fairground brain scan? Well, it didn’t exist. Thank God. What is there now within my skull? Just a crackle of old, dead leaves, a rat-filled attic of dried memories, a sand-bag of half-forgotten thoughts.
I remember sitting there, at the Slip on Swansea Sands, with the summer ending, thinking about going back to school, watching the tide creep slowly in, wondering what life was all about.
Sometimes we twist ourselves into knots. We double-think our thoughts, put our feet in the wrong hole in our jeans, slide our socks on backwards, put our shirts on inside -out.
Poor twisted mortals, we have made up our minds that all is well, that everything is for the best in the best of all worlds, but we are not candid with each other and sometimes we are so twisted we cannot see the truth even when it is staring at us from the mirror.
Alas, my front tooth is chipped. My hairline is receding. My whiskers are turning as grey as my thinning hair that has already lost its curl and now falls straight forward in the Julius Caesar cut that belies the closeness of the Ides of March.
Teeth WFNB 5 March 2022 This is the story I was reading last night when Island View suffered its brief power outage and I was cut off from the WFNB Zoom reading. My apologies for the break in communications. First the text and then the live reading.
Lunchtime. I open a can of tom8to soup and heat it on the stove. I slice the remains of yesterday’s loaf of bread into one-inch cubes and fry them in olive oil and garlic. Tom8to soup with croutons. Then I put two slices of bread in the toaster. My father will only eat toast soaked in butter and layered with Marmite when he eats tomahto soup. “Lunch is ready,” I call out. The black American Cocker Spaniel, bought by my mother in a moment of madness, by telephone, unseen, camps in the kitchen. It nests at the far end of the table, by the stove, and defends its territory with warning growls and a snapping of yellowed teeth. I do my best to avoid the dog. “Dad, your lunch is ready,” I call out, a little bit louder. Dog, as my father calls it, growls and clatters its teeth. It has hidden a treasure in the folds of its old, gray comfort blanket, and guards it with the fierce, loving worry of a dragon protecting its golden hoard. My father enters the kitchen just as I place the soup on the table. “I’m not ready to eat,” my father growls. Put it back in the pot.” “What’s wrong, dad? I thought you were hungry.” “My teeth,” my father mumbles through a mouthful of pink gums. “I can’t find my teeth.” “Where on earth did you put them?” “I don’t know. If I knew where I’d put them, I wouldn’t have lost them.” My father circulates round the kitchen opening drawers, lifting saucepan lids, and shaking empty yogurt pots to see if they’ll offer up the rattling sound of lost teeth. “I can’t find them anywhere. I can’t eat lunch without my teeth.” “But it’s only soup, dad, tom8to soup.” “I don’t like tom8to soup. Your mother always made tomahto soup. Why can’t you be more like your mother?” “Sorry, dad. I’ll call it tomahto soup, if that will make you feel better. But it’s still made out of tom8toes.” “Don’t be so sarcastic. Help me find my teeth,” my father stomps towards the stove and Dog growls fiercely from its blanket as it guards its treasure. “Take that, you dirty dog,” my father pokes Dog in the ribs with his stick and Dog howls and spits out what it is chewing. “There they are,” my father’s voice trembles with excitement. He bends down, picks up his teeth, still hairy from the blanket and bubbly from Dog’s saliva, and pops them into his mouth. “That’s better,” he says, sitting down at the table. “Now I can enjoy my lunch.”
On being Welsh in a land ruled by the English Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus
I am the all-seeing eyes at the tip of Worm’s Head. I am the teeth of the rocks at Rhossili. I am the blackness in Pwll Ddu pool when the sea-swells suck the stranger in and out, sanding his bones.
Song pulled taut from a dark Welsh lung, I am the memories of Silure and beast mingled in a Gower Cave.
Tamer of aurox, hunter of deer, caretaker of coracle, fisher of salmon on the Abertawe tide, I am the weaver of rhinoceros wool.
I am the minority, persecuted for my faith, for my language, for my sex, for the coal-dark of my thoughts.
I am the bard whose harp, strung like a bow, will sing your death with music of arrows unleashed from the wet Welsh woods.
I am the barb that sticks in your throat from the dark worded ambush of my song.
And this has been a dialog with my time and my place. But what is time? A river flowing? A long line leading from my beginning to my end? Alpha and Omega? An instant held between finger and thumb and so swiftly forgotten? A dream I dream when I am awake or asleep? And which is my real dream, waking or sleeping, sleeping or lying awake?
And what is my place? This house in which I now live? The garden I watch from my kitchen window? My town? This forested area where I think I belong? My county? My province? My region? And how do I relate to my “time” or my “place” to this being called “Roger”, this dream-Roger who dreams this post-amniotic ocean of life in which he now drifts? I dream I am male yet when I read Carl Jung I learn that a large part of me is female. I always thought I was masculine / macho / male, yet when a large part of me is feminine / hembra / female, I am no longer sure what I am. And how much does it matter?
I have ten fingers yet I use only two to type. Two fingers manipulate twenty-six letters, selecting some, rejecting others, making careless mistakes, organizing and reorganizing, shuffling all those verbal cards. I turn this black-and-white keyboard world upside down when I think my subversive thoughts and type them onto the computer screen and then print them out on what starts as a snow-white page that slowly fills with ant-size letters. Time and place, male and female: I lay on my side in hospital and the young urologist shot me full of female hormones so my prostrate cancer would not take over my inner organs and destroy my life. Place and time: I lie awake at night and shape disturbing dreams, dreams I have never before dreamed of dreaming.
Some nights I sense the end is drawing near. I fear it. In my beginning is my end. Beginning and end: both belong to me as do time and space, so central to the story of my life. For life will continue with or without me even if I am not there to bear witness. But I have been here, and parts of my story will remain embedded in the mind of each and every one of those who knew me and heard me speak.
Beethoven took the Fifth and rewrote it in his own image. I want to rewrite my life. I want my youth to return. I want to be young and athletic and lithe … I do not want to be this old man with a stick who bends double when he walks and sticks a blue sticker in the windscreen of his car.
I want to refuse to open the door when the postman knocks to deliver my mail. I know that soon he will bring me that registered letter, for which I must sign, with that last fatal message, the subpoena from which there is no appeal. I guess that like the snow and the wild geese, he’ll be back tomorrow, or the next day, in spite of those voices telling me that tomorrow never comes. And so, on an unusually Odd Sunday in a bar they once called Corked, or at another table in another wine bar with a different name, raise a glass to me when I am gone and leave an empty glass on the table for me. If you do, I promise I’ll be there.
Comments: This, as promised, is the final chapter from On Being Welsh. Chronotopos is Bakhtin’s theory that all our writing is a dialog with our time (chronos) and our place (topos). “Know me, know my time and place.” When we discover and explore our time and place we begin to understand ourselves and our roles in life. Then we can start rethinking who and what we are, what we have been, what we want to be, what we need to do in order to change. But first, we must know ourselves, for without self-knowledge, we are ships adrift, floating rudderless on a rising sea, or driven by the forceful wind of others into places where we may not wish to go. My friends, I raise a glass to you, filled, alas, with orange juice, because it is breakfast time, here in Island View, on the first Sunday, damp and cold and wet of 2022.
Only the winners write the history of their conquests, only the winners. Am I a winner, then? Of course I am. I’m writing this aren’t I? Therefore, ipso facto, I am a winner. This means that although they trashed and thrashed me, they never broke me nor was I a loser. I survived. And in that world in which I lived, surviving without surrendering was a victory in itself. But this is no tale of a hero, of bloody deeds, of a great victory. It is a survivor’s tale. So, if I won, then they lost, and who knows now how the losers felt, history’s non-winners, their slates wiped clean now, their names anonymous, erased from my story, not carved in stone nor impressed into steel. What’s in a name? The Red Wings, the Black Hawks, the Braves, the Algonquins? Whose heart lies broken and buried at Wounded Knee? Why does the Wolastoq rise in the Notre Dame mountains and flow down through unceded land to the City of Fredericton that noble daughter of the woods, and on to the city of Saint John on Fundy Bay? Why Wolastoq, Notre Dame, Fredericton, Saint John? “Sticks and stones will break my bones, yet names will never hurt me.” But what if I am called Nemo and have no other name? No-name man, no-name woman, no-name child, no language to call my own, no culture, no history, except the one that others wrote and forced me to believe or the innocent who causes me to rebel
“Grandpa,” she says, climbing on my knee. “Tell me a story. Please.” “Once upon a time,” I begin. “There was this little girl …” She wriggles and giggles. “What was her name?” “I don’t know.” “Yes, you do.” “Don’t.” “Do.” “Was it me? Am I that little girl?” “You can be if you want.” “I want. How does my story end?” “I don’t know. You’ve only just started it.”
So, write your poems, write your stories, write your childhood, write your memories, write what you know, invent what you don’t know. You can’t remember your name? Give yourself a new one. You have forgotten your myths? Create new ones. You have forgotten your language? Seek and you will find, and when you have found, learn your language again, a word at a time, phrase by phrase, word-picture by word-picture, until you have renewed your world and your place in it. Let your ancestors stride through your veins again and again to stand in the spotlight that you shine upon them. Restriction, extinction, suppression of the weakest and poorest, survival of the fittest … You, you who are reading this, you who have survived, you can count yourself among the strongest and the bravest. Now name yourself for who and what you are. Pick up your pen and write. Lazarus I name you: step out from your living tomb, step out from your kennel-cave. Pick up your bed and walk and talk, and write your own story. And remember the words of Oscar Wilde, “Tell your own tale, and be yourself, my friend, because everyone else is taken.”
rogermoorepoet 