Burning (Andante Non Troppo) - Jack Gilbert

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

Burning (Andante Non Troppo)
                              -  Jack Gilbert

We are all burning in time, but each is consumed
at his own speed. Each is the product
of his spirit's refraction, of the inflection
of that mind. It is the pace of our living
that makes the world available. Regardless of
the body's lion-wrath or forest waiting, despite
the mind's splendid appetite or the sad power
in our soul's separation from God and women,
it is always our gait of being that decides
how much is seen, what the mystery of us knows,
and what the heart will smell of the landscape
as the Mexican train continues at a dog-trot each
day going north. The grand Italian churches are
covered with detail which is visible at the pace
people walk by. The great modern buildings are
blank because there is no time to see from the car.
A thousand years ago when they built the gardens
of Kyoto, the stones were set in the streams askew.
Whoever went quickly would fall in. When we slow,
the garden can choose what we notice. Can change
our heart. On the wall of a toilet in Rock Springs
years ago there was a dispenser that sold tubes of
cream to numb a man's genitals. Called Linger.

I especially loved the lines 'It is the pace of our living / that makes the world available.' and 'the stones were set in the streams askew / Whoever went quickly would fall in. When we slow, /  the garden can choose what we notice. Can change / our heart.'  The poem ends very strongly (typical of any Gilbert piece), tying a  metaphysical idea to the real-world: a pleasure-enhancing sex-cream that  works how?-- by letting you 'linger' ;-)  Classic!

Comments

[zagzagael.livejournal.com]

I really, really loved this and appreciate you posting it. For me, however, I had the exact opposite reaction to the last two lines - I found them cheapening. Yes, "linger" but really, graphically it's all about not shooting your wad too soon....I don't know. I don't think the piece needed it. It is so amazingly strong - the first line is astonishing. Simply astonishing. I think the last two don't fit. IMO.

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

That's the thing -- why is it that it is somehow erudite to discuss the gardens of Kyoto but genital cream is cheap? I think Gilbert strived all his life to find the unastonishing, banal beauty in and around him -- a lot of it included things that may otherwise be categorised as crude. I do see where your complaint is coming from, however, and I don't think it uncommon to find the last two lines cheap in an otherwise polished piece. If you enjoyed this piece, I highly recommend the one I posted last weekend: http://community.livejournal.com/greatpoets/2532727.html

./w

[zagzagael.livejournal.com]

I understand and I see I wasn't clear enough - I have no issue with poetic creaming or elevated prose fucking. For me, the lines cheapen the poem by "individualizing" it - it goes from global, universal, metaphysical, existential to a person reading a vending box in a bathroom....for staying power cream. *shrug* It's the shift from macro to micro that stuttered it. And...perhaps....might date the piece ineffectually someday.

[lynka.livejournal.com]

I agree - essentially it's just out of metaphorical context. I mean, going from macro to micro would have been fine had he chosen a less jarring "smallness" to settle on at the end.

[lynka.livejournal.com]

But don't get me wrong, I love Gilbert immensely.

[zagzagael.livejournal.com]

Absolutely~! And I've now added that first intensely moving and true line to my textual tattoo ideas. It's a glorious thing.

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

Where are you going to get it?

./w

[zagzagael.livejournal.com]

Gods, get me talking about ink....

Well, I've got a few quotes I'm considering at the moment. I really want a collarbone piece and yet, I've also got a non-textual idea for that area...so it's a bit of a toss up at this point. Quotes ahead of this Gilbert one are two Goethe lines:

...you are the butterfly, and you are gone...

...nothing is worth more than this day...

A textual band perhaps? Still musing....

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

He he.. you have to watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4OhgrnXYds

Leonard Cohen talking to an obviously smitten interviewer.

./w

[zagzagael.livejournal.com]

Heh, thanks for that - I've not seen it before. Gods, he was hot when he was young - still is, but not quite so...cocky? What a dangerous intelligence.

[words-of-wisdom.livejournal.com]

I agree.