Social Graces
Sept 1 2010


How many milliseconds
are a fraction too long
not to look crazed, obsessive
rude?

Is it only the clueless, reclusive, elusive types
who are shifty-eyed,
look at anything, but you?
Casting their eyes around the room
like a wounded bird,
desperate for any resting place.

I can excuse
the thyrotoxic stare
the myasthenic droop,
the executioner’s
self-protective evasion.
But I knew you had something to hide
not looking me in the eye, like that.

Which made me wonder,
do sociopaths
make eye contact, at all?
Or are they such astute students
of human behaviour,
they can replicate warmth, caring
commitment,
a breezy bonhomie?

I never quite learned the secret
to the reassuring gaze,
the manly handshake, firm and dry,
the frothy banality
of small talk.
Was there a memo, some time
in my adolescent life
I missed?

The anthropologist from Mars
the autistic savant,
the socially inept, who lives in his head,
know how complicated
human engagement can be.
Recalling names.
The recognition of faces.
The touch that doesn’t linger
a fraction too long.

The locking onto of eyes.
Her black bottomless pupils
opening wide,
you could take forever
falling.




I was reading a review of a new biography of Peter Gzowski (the famous, now deceased, writer and CBC radio host). I was always a terrific fan and dedicated listener, but I wasn’t surprised to read he had messy personal life, or that he wasn’t always the best behaved or best tempered. What I didn’t know was that he was notorious for not making eye contact with his guests. This factoid came up a few times in the review. And on reading this, I immediately saw all the possibilities of evasion, self-doubt, and manipulation that can be implied by too much, or too little, eye contact. And also the precise and inscrutable choreography of correct human behaviour that we subconsciously absorb; or, the case of autistics or the socially inept, painstakingly acquire. And also how complicated these seemingly simple tasks really are: facial recognition, for example. This simple task is the product of eons of human evolution, and has a specialized dedicated area of the brain, unique to us. (I recently learned, by way of further example, that Oliver Sachs – the renowned neurologist and celebrated author – is unable to recognize faces, a disorder that goes by the mouthful of a name “prosopagnosia”. (And to whom I gratefully owe, by the way, “the anthropologist from Mars”.)) Needless to say, I dropped the paper and immediately started writing about eye contact. This is how it turned out.

My medical background rarely enters my poetry. Which I suppose some might think a mysterious lapse; or at least a waste. So for anyone who has been waiting for this (as if!), I’m pleased to have shoe-horned a couple of references into this poem. I hope they aren’t too obscure for the average reader.

The mysterious woman who infiltrates this poem is an act of pure imagination: I was never exploited by a sociopath about whom I have mixed feelings! Some of this is close to the truth, however: I’m terrible at remembering names; normal social graces never came easily to me; and I am an introvert who often prefers “liv(ing) in his head”.

The final stanza is the kind of ending I like best. That’s because I am too often susceptible to the rhyming couplet: which does nicely tie up the ending, but has the too neat quality of the Hallmark card. Here, though, the ending not only sneaks up on you; and not only leaves things open and unresolved; but it slightly transforms everything that preceded it, which makes you want to go back and re-visit the poem from the start. I’m quite pleased with that quality of ambush, the lack of a hard conclusion.