Irving Layton: Reprobate

Why do I look for your face in every crowd

Though I know you most likely 

Have not yet been born?

I believe you will one day wield 

The jawbone of an ass.

If Sampson were to pull down the stone façade

Would he not also crush the marbled prophets of Israel

Who still adorn its walls

And yourself along with them?

For you there was something erotic 

in the pursuit of prophecy

A heat of knowledge

An intellectual energy

The verbal hopscotch of mindfeet alighting

On stones in the still water at sundown

Again the poem is a field that must be plowed

Aligned in rows the words become nutrients in new soil

Like great clay clods that must be broken.

The poet has the roll of prophecy thrust upon him

When no one else will speak the truth. Only the kernel

Of every object nourishes. Where is he who 

Undoes the envelopes and removes the husks?

The elect hear the awful voice of the reprobate.

Its annoying and loud.  It grates against their eardrums. 

They whisper to each other, “I wonder what small amount 

Of money could be paid to stop this noise?”

It is as though the Hebrew tradition of killing God’s prophets 

Is continued from ancient days. The voice of Prophecy 

Is still the voice of honest indignation.

There is a reason that those who came after Wordsworth

Considered him to be a turncoat

And remembered him with the bitterest enmity:

He became a poet laureate

An adjunct of the state

A Sampson shorn of his locks 

And paraded before them in chains.

But the real vital force of poetry

Will always confront the elect.

This is why I mistrust poetry produced

Within the academy itself;

It has no awareness of its purpose.

Where has the power of poetry gone?

Where are Neruda or Ginsberg?

In the ancient times referred to by anthropologists

As the 1960’s poets packed political clout 

Capable of antagonizing the force of evil 

In the world. What happened to change that?

* Notes:

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know

That things depart which never may return:

Childhood and youth, friendship, and love's first glow,

Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.

These common woes I feel. One loss is mine

Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.

Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine

On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:

Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood

Above the blind and battling multitude:

In honoured poverty thy voice did weave 

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty.

Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

(Shelley on Wordsworth)

When Wordsworth abandoned poverty he became a sell out.

The Dead Baby

The young doctor who know one knows

Wraps the dead baby in swaddling clothes

The leathery baby placed

Inside the leathery suitcase

The young doctor walks out the door

Leaves the hospital with its septic air

Carries the dead baby down

The subway stairs

The dead baby is a kernel of truth

Encased in a husk of insidious lies

The young doctor who know one knows

Carries the dead baby in its repose

To the morg

Note: I harvested this from an old notebook from 2004. It is inspired by an episode in William Carlos Williams autobiography. Williams does not tell the story in detail, but he makes reference to a time at a NYC hospital when he smuggled a dead baby to the Mortuary to protect one of the overworked nurses, (I believe that is the inference--again the tale is not clearly told) Being a doctor in NYC after the first world war was rough, by Williams account.

The Sperm Whale

There is something to being on the surface of it

Lashing about in the sun and waves

Forever buoyed like a porpoise among forests of kelp.

Many dolphins have orange dots on their foreheads

But flippers that cannot reach up and remove them.

I am not like them

I am a sperm whale and I rarely visit the surface

Forever compelled to dive yet further down

Into the dark cold recesses of the past

For in the depths of the past

Space opens anew and the stars which are below

Shine again in another light.

The Farmer and the Shepherd

I have always imagined the farmer as antagonist

Imposing a Euclidian geometry of lines and squares

Over the curvature of the earth

My sympathies have instead been with the shepherds

And perhaps there is a generational animosity

Between farmers and shepherds

That goes back some time

The farmer is an owner who has big plans

The shepherd has nothing but his songs

The farmer is a servant on his own land

His stewardship is morally commendable

The shepherd has a kind heart and a sweet song

In his throat. He is in unity with his dog.

He is a lover who enjoys the wine

Of the farmer’s bounty.

This is what makes the farmer mean.

He resents the shepherd’s freedom

For wealth can never be stowed upon him.

                                                                                                            

The Demon of Literature

This is what the poet searches for

The moment in every day that Satan

Cannot find

Some of my ancestry were Amish

Until one day in the 19^th century

When my progenitor added a wooden back

To their buggy. His wife had a bad back.

She couldn’t ride to church without it.

The church elders ruled that such an addition

To the standard buggy was not plain

They instructed him to remove it.

I imagine the words that passed between them

Were not kind. Harsh guttural exchanges

Perhaps reverting to the vulgar German.

When my own father absconded

With my young mother after their marriage

And headed for North Webster, IN

For the Glory Barn and entered the church

Of Hobart Freeman and his Faith Assembly

An analogous confrontation was fated to take place.

During a visit to our home the church leaders

Discovered that my mother had the works

Of Shakespeare and Arthur Conan-Doyle

And Bram Stoker on her bookshelf.

They pronounced that she carried

A literary demon inside herself

Warning her of the danger of idolatry

Which accusation has turned out to be true.

Such a demon I find has transversed itself upon me

And long after my father broke with Hobart Freeman

Using perhaps the plainest Pennsylvania Dutch

This demon continues to express his serpent seed.

The Albatross

Funny creatures these literary one percenters

All we really desire is occasional human intercourse

Which to others seams to come so naturally

So practiced its like a gift to them

Pristine in their illiteracy

And perfect in their social posture.

For us with minds too dissolved in the literature

Of previous centuries; the languages, the habits

And manners of the past crowd in upon us.

We have not the alphabet of social propriety

Or the basic rudiments of common human sentiment.

Even the crude sign language of the body and face

Cannot penetrate our boney heads.

Whatever words we choose must give offense

Especially if the listener be another of our kind.

We become pathetic in the attempt at polite conversation

We bristle, we snarl, we protect our little territories

Of intellect, barking at one another like seals

On a rocky beach.

These awkward wings have no utility

When brought down to the deck

On the ship of human interaction

For the people we know best are the imaginary

Friends of writers long dead.

Look how ridiculous we are in public!

With shirts tucked into our boxers

Food in our beards

Our tube socks with our wing tipped shoes

Why are we incapable of doing what to others

Comes so naturally?

But which of us would clip our wings

So that we could more easily navigate

On the deck of that ship?

Urban Frame

      Urban Frame

When the old woman fell from the city bus

And onto the curb of Belmont Avenue

I was watching from the window

Of a corner coffee shop

I saw the two polished girls

Giggling with color

Who stood nearby

Pretending not to notice her

As the bus pulled away

I watched the hustling businessman

Who, tripping, kicked her cane

Swore, and hurried on his way

And another young man

Who stooped to help her

Until he remembered his previous engagement

He left her there

With her knees in the street

And her hands up on the curb

Quaking with the strain

Unable to lift her head

I sat in that coffee shop

Not twenty feet away from her

The glass in the window

Separated me

Protecting me from the scene outside

And then I focused on the glass

Not five inches from my face

And I saw my own image in the glass

A weak mirage of my reflection

Projected onto that scene.

And it did not reflect well on me that day.