Marvelous

I can’t get past this poem.

Whir (from The Real Sub­ject)
by Keith Waldrop

Do not alarm your­self, I
could not rest con­tent with
moral lec­tures and con­tin­ual
repetition

like the solar sys­tem, I
could not hold my head up, made
end­lessly to
glow

des­tined for grand cer­e­monies, I
was much affected by find­ing myself so
thin and so worn
down

(we use the­ory
to mean it is pos­si­ble to
choose, e.g., why I am just the
size I am)

a mil­lion mil­lion, a
cool and mor­ti­fy­ing man­ner — what
gov­erns
motions

I think Whir con­tains the (oppos­ing and com­pli­men­tary) per­spec­tives of youth and age. Both are com­manded to choose an iden­tity, to make a name–one from the crush­ing promise of the future, one from the fat and drift­ing past. Yet nei­ther one actu­ally has a choice; their iden­ti­ties are tied to the inevitable and inex­plic­a­ble. The recently born belong to their birthing grounds. The soon-to-be-dead self belongs to the moment. Each can pass the time winc­ing at the sharp­ness, the clar­ity, of life with­out option. Life, that is, with only immensity.

This poem stands far and away and looks back, but it comes from that most inti­mate and human feel­ing of weari­ness at so much unweary mat­ter. The old and the young know that the mil­lion mil­lion is actu­ally touch­able, but why try? They are aware of the spe­cial pow­ers humans have, but use only the pow­ers of sight and of wait­ing. This has also been called mar­veling, but that is too grand a word for what it feels like to watch the con­tin­ual repetition.

And it is because this poem speaks from polar per­spec­tives that it expresses the entire orbit. Like the poles of a tent cre­ate space. I like this poem because it reminds me of how I would like to feel every day of my life: awake–very, very tired, but awake. This poem is painful because, well, it sounds like the voice of man who com­mit­ted sui­cide. But the way the sen­tences are struc­tured on the page, and the empha­sis on words like glow, also make it sound like his soul tran­scended. Whir.

Life is painful. The years are unnav­i­ga­ble. But we can also craft a poem and hear this voice come through. A voice that joins the poles. A voice that marvels.

There now, that felt good. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this poem, too.