"Elegy for John, My Student Dead of AIDS" (Robert Cording)

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Elegy for John, My Student Dead of AIDS
by Robert Cording

In my office, where you sat years ago and talked
Of Donne, of how you loved
His persona, the bravado he could muster
To cover love’s uncertainties,
Books still line the shelves, centuries
Of writers who’ve tried to make a kind of sense
Of life and death and, failing that,
Found words to stand at least
Against the griefs we can’t resolve.

Now you’re dead. And what I’ve got to say
Comes now from that silence
When our last talk fouled up. I allowed you less,

As always, than you wanted to say.
We talked beside the Charles, a lunch hour reunion
Of sorts after years of your postcards
(New York, San Francisco, Greece),
Failed attempts to find a place to live.
The warm weather had come on

In a rush. You talked of being the first born,
Dark-haired, Italian son. How you rarely visited
The family you so clearly loved.
I shifted to books, to sunlight falling
Through sycamores and the idle play of underlying
Shadows. When we parted,
All that was really left was the feeling
You deserved better. And yet I was relieved
Our hour was up, that we had kept your confusion

To yourself. We shook hands, you drove off to Boston.
Now you’re dead and I wonder
If your nobleness of living with no one
To turn to ended in dishonor,
Your family ashamed. Or if your death had
About it a frail dignity,
Each darkening bruise precise as a writer’s word,
Saying, at last, who you were– exactly
And to anyone who would listen.

Comments

[mikkie28.livejournal.com]

thank you.

[duathir.livejournal.com]

"Found words to stand at least
Against the griefs we can’t resolve."

Thank you for this.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

It's great to hear a teacher thinking about his student so poignantly. Thanks for posting.

[thistle-verse.livejournal.com]

Jesus, this poem. *clutches chest*

Thank you for sharing this.

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

Totally agree. I found this viewpoint terrible. And shameful. And about the teacher's inability to connect, to accept. I really resonate with your thought about the confusion of queerness.

This stanza just reveals so much of the narrator and not in a good way -

Each darkening bruise precise as a writer’s word,
Saying, at last, who you were– exactly
And to anyone who would listen.

Why on EARTH would dying of AIDS tell anyone exactly who someone is?????????????????????? I find that sentiment to be....so wrong that it hurts me to read it.

Perhaps my own dead friends are making me read this incorrectly?

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for returning my comments. I'm relieved to know that I was not reading this incorrectly!

And I think this comm needs MORE strong discussion about some of the poets/poetry that is posted here. I would be dismayed to find out that someone could take offense. Although, reading through the comments here, I'm perplexed by the positive response.

[farrowing.livejournal.com]

the ending is definitely disturbing

[duathir.livejournal.com]

"About a failure of communication, but also about this cowardly pedagogical refusal to engage with what the teacher is afraid to know."

At least he had the guts to admit he was a coward, and the conscience to admit he was ashamed of it. Let other cowards read it and know his shame for their own.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Maybe you are not old enough to remember when gay people were so far in the closet that nobody knew they had AIDS and it was only when they were dying that anyone found out?

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

Nope. That's my generation. And that's why I'm so deeply offended by the tone of this poem. How are you finding it a positive statement of being queer and contracting this horrifying disease?

[evilstorm.livejournal.com]

I read it as the death being a consequence of a life lived queerly--not the natural consequence, I don't mean, but the consequence of the times. In spite of stigma, disease, and death, this student went out and had sex with other gay men. And his death of AIDS is, well, it's fucking shit, but it could be read as the ultimate defiance--not even the threat of death by horrible disease was going to make him stop acting in accordance with his orientation.

Disclaimer: I am queer, but of this generation that generally has it pretty good (generally), and certainly has it better than the previous'un. Second disclaimer: I am coming off a 16-hour shift and may not be making sense. Sorry.

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

Thanks for responding. Yes, I recognize that reading of the stanza, but the issue I have is that dying of AIDS could in any way be seen as a positive affirmation of self or lifestyle or choice. It wasn't. It was an insidious confusing horrific nightmare from which no one could escape with their lives. That is what is offensive to me. It feels simultanesouly trite and melodramatically symbolic.

I am trying NOT to dwell on this poem *heh* but I should look at it again so that I can put into exact words why it's so discouraging to me.

[evilstorm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, hell, I get that. I got what he was trying to say, but I'm with you there on the failure of the symbolism, really. "Frail dignity" and "darkening bruise" got me in that "that is not bloody right" way--nothing dignified about that death, and the bruises I gather would've looked more like being hit with a baseball bat rather than some faint delicate shadow.