it's life, carlos

[lunar-endeavor.livejournal.com]

Poem after Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Marvin Bell

"IT'S LIFE, CARLOS."

It's life that is hard: waking, sleeping, eating, loving, working and
     dying are easy.
It's life that suddenly fills both ears with the sound of that
     symphony that forces your pulse to race and swells your
     heart near to bursting.
It's life, not listening, that stretches your neck and opens your eyes
     and brings you into the worst weather of the winter to arrive
     once more at the house where love seemed to be in the air.

And it's life, just life, that makes you breathe deeply, in the air that
     is filled with wood smoke and the dust of the factory, because
     you hurried, and now your lungs heave and fall with the
     nervous excitement of a leaf in spring breezes, though it is
     winter and you are swallowing the dirt of the town.
It isn't death when you suffer, it isn't death when you miss each
     other and hurt for it, when you complain that isn't death,
     when you fight with those you love, when you misunder-
     stand, when one line in a letter or one remark in person ties
     one of you in knots, when the end seems near, when you
     think you will die, when you wish you were already
     dead---none of that is death.
It's life, after all, that brings you a pain in the foot and a pain in the
     hand, a sore throat, a broken heart, a cracked back, a torn
     gut, a hole in your abdomen, an irritated stomach, a swollen
     gland, a growth, a fever, a cough, a hiccup, a sneeze, a
     bursting blood vessel in the temple.
It's life, not nerve ends, that puts the heartache on a pedestal and
     worships it.
It's life, and you can't escape it. It's life, and you asked for it. It's
     life, and you won't be consumed by passion, you won't be
     destroyed by self-destruction, you won't avoid it by
     abstinence, you won't manage it by moderation, because it's
     life---life everywhere, life at all times---and so you won't be
     consumed by passion: you will be consumed by life.

It's life that will consume you in the end, but in the meantime ...
It's life that will eat you alive, but for now ...
It's life that calls you to the street where the wood smoke hangs,
     and the bare hint of a whisper of your name, but before you
     go ...

Too late: Life got its tentacles around you, its hooks into your
     heart, and suddenly you come awake as if for the first time,
     and you are standing in a part of the town where the air is
     sweet---your face flushed, your chest thumping, your
     stomach a planet, your heart a planet, your every organ a
     separate planet, all of it of a piece though the pieces turn
     separately, O silent indications of the inevitable, as among
     the natural restraints of winter and good sense, life blows you
     apart in her arms.

Comments

[nerak-g.livejournal.com]

i had to forward this to some friends who seemed to need it.
thank you.
:)

[sylphbranching.livejournal.com]

oo i like this, despite sentimentality, even inaccuracy - isn't everything we do that's not death - isn't that life? not separate from living? life is a noun that means the verb; they can't be separated! - still, the poem made me tingle...alive.
reminds me of mary oliver.

[lunar-endeavor.livejournal.com]

I think he's referring to life & living as a phenomenon, rather than simply the state of existence. It's a weird sort of distinction, but Bell exploits it well in this, I think.

It does have a bit of a Mary Oliver feel to it, in that somewhat celebratory tone...Marvin's voice is more gritty, to me, but he and Oliver go well together.