Keeping Time

Oct 28 2017

I watch the second hand

steadily circling

from twelve

                       ...to twelve

                                             ...to twelve.

Its effect is hypnotic,

so even as precious time

is seeping away

I am also oddly comforted,

eyes glazing over

under its spell.

With smooth relentless consistency

the closed loop

repeats and repeats.

As if beginning and end

could all happen at once.

As if an entire life

could be taken in at a glance.

Thin and red

it points silently

but never touches,

skirting the seconds, the numbers, the edge.

An indifferent mechanical device,

keeping time, as time vanishes

without animus

judgment

or dread.

The withered finger

of the Angel of Death

will point as silently

when his time eventually comes.

In His dark cowl

He will walk sombrely

and we will wordlessly follow along,

across the verge

the threshold

the veil.

As the second hand turns

and turns again.

As creatures of post-Enlightenment modernism, we see time as linear: history progresses; the future is limitless; we have agency. But for hundreds of thousands of years, time was cyclic: time and place never changed; we lived exactly as our forbears had lived; and without the conceits of individualism and personal agency, we were communal and fatalistic.

Yet our version of analog time recapitulates this ancient worldview. As I was closing up my iPad – of all things to bring an ancient worldview to mind! – the traditional clock icon caught and held my eye: the thin red second hand steadily and relentlessly circling, coming around again and again.

It was as if time wasn't passing at all; it simply continued in place, held in this 60 second interval. It was as if the future and past had telescoped in, and so were rendered meaningless: everything had equalized; nothing essential changed. With only a second hand, there is no keeping track. And in place of the oppressive feeling of time's relentless passage, I felt a reassuring calm: as if as long as I looked, time stood still.

So I put the first stanza down on the page, and from there the poem wrote itself. I don't accept the notion of an after-life – death is final, there is no soul, the mind does not exist outside of the brain – yet the poem ends up toying with the idea of cycles and continuity and another side. In that it captures the feeling of serenity I got from that sure steady second hand, I can live with a little magical thinking. There is no evidence for anything beyond the reality we know; but an open mind has to acknowledge that doesn't mean this reality is all there is. Because as someone who prefers reason and rigour over belief and wishful thinking, even I have to admit that you can't prove a negative.

My favourite line is keeping time, as time vanishes. I like the conceit inherent in the expression keeping time: as if keeping track was the same as taking possession.

I also just realized that I've used this title before. Then as now, I was attracted to the same paradox: as if you could "keep" something that is so ephemeral. I'm usually dissatisfied when I revisit old poems. I want to tinker and tweak. But I'm OK with this one. Here's the link: http://brianspoetryjournal.blogspot.ca/search?q=Keeping+Time

The Geography of Pain

Oct 21 2017

The geography of pain

a lifetime accumulates

following the news.

So now

I have a map of the world

that begins with Auschwitz and Birkenau

and ends with Falluja, Rwanda, Rakine, Sana'a

Mugabe, Pol Pot, Hussein, and Mao.

Too long

for only once through the alphabet.

Ignorance is bliss, they say.

If only I could unlearn

the suffering and sin,

somehow unsee

what the camera witnessed

through its unblinking lens.

Or become at ease

with the uncomfortable truth

of proximity, and sameness,

our empathy

for those who could be us.

Because it's hard

to identify with strangers

across oceans

and datelines

and barriers of tongue,

resigned, as we are

to the human condition.

While the arithmetic of one

in whom we see ourselves

is a sucker-punch

direct to the gut;

so deeply touching

we feel what they felt.

But even then

the list of places

yellows and fades,

like the newsprint

on which the headlines were written.

The weight of suffering

that would be unbearable

if you could see every face,

inhabit the bodies

that were burned and raped.

The bloodied limbs, hacked-off

at a warlord's whim

a cleric's cruel dogma.

So now, I'm mostly inured to the agony.

And being incapable of faith

cannot console myself

with illusions of justice

a loving God.

Because while the righteous died horribly, burned alive

the complicit deny, skeptics contend,

their killers fatten

the corrupt collect.

And while the survivors proclaim

their prayers were answered,

what about the dead

who as fervently prayed?

How I would I love to see

the same map from space,

green, and borderless.

But the names and places weigh on me

and I cannot let go.

A custodian of memory

who by forgetting

would betray the past.

I first tried my hand at poetry in 2001, after hearing Michael Enright interview Billy Collins on his Sunday morning show on CBC Radio. Billy Collins' conversational tone, wry humour, and everyday themes demystified and simplified the whole idea of poetry. He didn't take himself at all seriously. And since I'm not much of a story-teller (not to mention prone to instant gratification!), poetry seemed a far more tempting medium to this aspiring writer than the short story's longer-form narrative; or worse, the even more feared novel, and its years-long commitment!

But I've also had to restrain myself from being too political in my writing. Or from bewing an advocate, a a champion of causes. Because I generally find this works poorly in poetry. It tends toward sanctimony and self-righteousness and proselytizing, and ends up sounding presumptuous and pompous and preachy. I'd rather argue that kind of thing, as well as read it, in an essay than a poem. As a result, I've pushed myself to be more personal; not confessional, which makes me uncomfortable, but still personal. Which is also hard for me, since my life is rather boring and my life experience limited. So it was another Michael Enright interview that led me to revisit this poem, which then consisted only of the opening stanza. Here, it was with Dennis Lee. He recited some of his well-loved children's poems. But he also read some heartfelt and hard-hitting political stuff. And I suddenly felt free to be political, as well. Not in a partisan sense, but in the sense of someone engaged with the world.

I'm also a news junkie, and realize that over the decades I've constructed my map of the world through the narrow aperture of tragedy and natural disaster and human perfidy. I have all these places in my head – mostly exotic and remote – and they are all touched by evil or misfortune. (And an astute reader will notice that the poem is concerned more the misfortune that comes from human depravity than natural disaster: not unexpected, from a misanthrope like me.) It was this unfortunate geography that gave the poem its starting point. Although I much prefer the view from space that ends it: “green, and borderless.”

Of His Time

Oct 3 2017

My father was a different man

when I saw him with his friends.

Like a vaguely familiar acquaintance

you can't quite place

but feel sure you've met.

A boyish smile lit his eyes

as his face relaxed

in easy laughter.

Nothing had changed

yet he'd somehow shifted;

like a duplicate image

that had lost its sharpness

in reproduction.

And the odd profanity

that would pass his lips

with the thrilled vehemence of transgression,

a buttoned-down man

who rarely misbehaved.

He told a good story

but was an even better listener,

admiring his buddies' embellishments and stretches,

the well of spot-on jokes

gushing up.

Good stories

he would tell, and re-tell

as advancing age hobbled him;

while we affectionately sat

nodding indulgently.

It is so hard

to truly know another.

And to know a parent

as anything but

comes late in life

if it comes at all.

Alone with my mother

man and wife.

The boss at work

spending life.

Then lunch with the regulars,

ordering the usual

at their customary table.

Did he wisecrack with the waitress?

Flirt shamelessly?

Forget to leave a tip?

The quiet man

in his sovereign Buick

on his early morning drive.

A time I think he prized,

thoughts drifting in and out

as the radio droned.

When he was so much younger

than I am now,

the foreign country of the past

I find myself imagining

in snapshots and newsreels

in scratchy black-and-white.

The only way I know the man

whose hair was full

and skin unlined.

We are all multiple personality disordered.

So inexplicably different

with the different people in our lives.

And the inner voice

that remembers every version

as it struggles for coherence,

hoping

that by the end of life

we will have found ourselves.

There's the version

who thinks presence is enough.

Then the one who shows his love

by doing.

And the one who feels free

to say it out loud.

Or the man

who was too much of his time

to be so bold.