By Heart - Aug 5 2021

 

By Heart

Aug 5 2021

Putting words down on the page

is not the same as saying them.

Because there's no reason to think

that anyone is listening

or will ever even hear.

But they at least don't disappear

with a gust of wind

or the inverse square of distance,

the thickness of air

that muffles words

as soon as they leave your lips.

And we writers, who struggle with futility

can at least console ourselves

with illusions of posterity

and meaning

and somehow moving toward,

even if we never get

anywhere close.

I think of arctic explorers

dragging loaded sleds through heavy snow,

slogging across

great ridges of ice

and between the massive floes,

where thinly frozen crevices

are near-instant death;

the cold, constricting your throat

lungs gasping for breath.

But who, despite days and days

of hard labour

remain mired in the pack,

drifting away from the pole

as fast as they approach.

Still, flags have been planted

at the top of the world

in bright midnight sun,

sharply etched shadows

in the clear arctic air.

And exhausted men

with frosted beards and wind-burned skin

have stood shoulder to shoulder

smiling for posterity.

Or you could keep it to talk.

Like those deep conversations

on dorm room floors

ripe with bootleg pot,

the promise to change the world

you long ago long forgot.

The tub-thumping speech

that brought the throng to its feet

enthralled by his rhetoric.

Or whispering into her ear,

your hot wet breath

as intimate as entering.

Or instead of passing talk

you could share a poem

reciting it by heart.

Because the words on the page

come alive

only when given voice.

And what could gratify a poet more

than to know his words

don't speak for him alone.

In my introduction to poetry many years ago, I learned that it began as an aural/oral art form: never written (because poetry preceded written language!), but rather memorized and then passed down. And that to experience the music of poetry, it must be heard at the pace of the human voice: so poetry is meant to be recited; not spoken in your head, not read to yourself. Which is where this poem ends.

In beginning it, I was contending with the potential futility of writing something that may never be read or heard; how putting down the first word on a blank piece of paper (or empty screen) constitutes an act of faith. (Not much, because if it doesn't go anywhere you can always just throw it out and start again tomorrow. But still!) And how, when you say something, it's gone; but when you commit something to the page, there is at least the illusion of permanence.

The metaphor of the arctic explorers walking on drifting pack ice came to me as soon as I wrote the end to the preceding stanza: the image of moving toward something with great effort, while having it recede just as fast. What better illustration of the concept of futility!

Finally, I remember Michael Enright – the veteran journalist, and most recently host of CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition – being enthralled by the expression “learn by heart”: not just committing a poem to memory, but taking it into your soul. He made a hackneyed phrase fresh; instead of glossing over it, he made me stop and really hear the nuance of language. I think that this “learning by heart” – not just parroting, but finding your own truth in someone else's words – speaks to the universality of the human experience, as well as the power of good writing.